World

Najim Laachraoui, Brussels airport bomber, may have worked there for 5 years

A man identified as one of the Brussels airport suicide bombers worked there for five years until 2012, according to Belgian television station VTM.

24-year-old has been ID'd as bomb-maker for the Paris and Brussels attacks

CCTV capture, left, shows a suspect in the Zaventem airport attack in Brussels. On the right, an image provided by the Belgian Federal Police shows suspect Najim Laachraoui. He is believed to be the suicide bomber at the airport, as well as the bomb-maker for both the Brussels and Paris attacks. (Belgian Federal Police/Associated Press)

A man identified as one of the Brussels airport suicide bombers worked there for five years until 2012, according to Belgian television station VTM.

The March 22 explosions at the airport and another explosion in the subway killed 32 people.

Flemish-language station VTM reported that Najim Laachraoui, a 24-year-old Moroccan-born Belgian, was recruited to work at the airport by a temp agency. The news report did not say what job he was doing.

European security officials had previously named Laachraoui as the suspected bomb-maker for the Paris attacks, which left 130 people dead. A French police official told The Associated Press that Laachraoui's DNA was found on all of the vests as well as in a Brussels apartment where they were made.

The Belgian prosecutor's office said he travelled to Syria in February 2014 and was checked by guards at the Austria-Hungary border while driving in a Mercedes with Salah Abdeslam and one other person.

Abdeslam, captured in March in a police raid in Brussels, was charged with "terrorist murder" by Belgian authorities. He is a top suspect in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead.

Laachraoui also may have worked at the European Parliament. Earlier this month, European Parliament said one of the Brussels attackers had held a summer cleaning job at its Brussels headquarters in 2009 and 2010. A source close to the inquiry named that person as Laachraoui.