Three people detained in the investigation into the attacks that killed 130 people in Paris in November were freed Wednesday after extensive interrogation, Belgian prosecutors said.
None of the three were charged, the Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement. The people questioned were taken into custody following a police search in the Brussels district of Uccle on Tuesday. Belgian authorities have not said what they were looking for or may have found.
Brussels was home to many of the attackers who struck the French capital Nov. 13 with suicide bombings and volleys of assault weapons fire. According to Belgian and French investigators, the same cell was behind the suicide bombings that killed 32 people at Brussels Airport and in the Brussels subway on March 22.
Responsibility for the carnage in the two European capitals was claimed by the Islamic State, and the extremist’s group’s online magazine on Wednesday praised the Brussels plotters, and said two brothers who were suicide bombers in that attack had been key actors in the bloodbath in Paris as well.
“All preparations for the raids in Paris and Brussels started” with Ibrahim El Bakraoui, 30, and his brother Khalid, 27, Dabiq magazine said. “These two brothers gathered the weapons and the explosives.”
It is “firstly due” to the El Bakraouis that the attacks in the French capital occurred, Dabiq said. Subsequently, it said, Khalid El Bakraoui had a dream “which motivated him to carry out another istishhadi (martyrdom) operation.”
The younger El Bakraoui blew himself up in a rush-hour Brussels subway train, killing 16 victims. That same morning, his older brother was one of two suicide bombers who detonated explosives-laden suitcases at Brussels Airport, killing another 16.
Dabiq also confirmed Belgian and French police findings that Najim Laachraoui, the second Brussels Airport suicide bomber, manufactured the explosives used in both the Paris and Brussels attacks.
(AP)