Brussels attacks: Bomber was a ‘model student’

Brussels suicide bomber Najim Laachraoui, a veteran Islamist fighter in Syria also suspected of making explosive belts for November’s Paris attacks, was a model student in a Brussels Catholic high school, the school’s director has revealed.

Laachraoui, a 25-year-old Belgian, was one of Tuesday’s airport suicide bombers; security officials identified him as one of the three men in a CCTV image that was released.

“Najim Laachraoui was a very good student,” said Veronica Pellegrini, the director of the Institut de la Sainte Famille d’Helmet, a Catholic school in the ethnically mixed east Brussels borough of Schaerbeek.