Ibrahim El Bakraoui

Ibrahim El Bakraoui (; 9 October 1986 – 22 March 2016) was a Belgian-Moroccan terrorist who was one of the suicide bombers at Brussels Airport in the 2016 Brussels bombings.

Personal background Ibrahim El Bakraoui was born on 9 October 1986 in Brussels and raised in Laeken, a residential district in northwestern Brussels. His father, a retired butcher and devout Muslim, emigrated from Morocco; his mother was described as "conservative and reclusive". His brother Khalid has been identified as the suicide bomber at Maelbeek/Maalbeek metro station in Brussels on 22 March 2016.

In January 2010, he was involved in the attempted robbery of a currency exchange office, where he shot at police with a Kalashnikov rifle while providing a lookout for his accomplices. One police officer was shot in the leg but survived.

Later in 2010, Ek Bakraoui was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but was released on parole in 2014 under the condition that he did not leave the country for longer than a month. Following his release from prison, he collected €25,000 in Belgian government benefits until December 2015. He failed to abide by the conditions of parole and was sought again by the authorities. Belgian authorities were informed of the detention and deportation, but they apparently ignored the warnings, and the Netherlands released El Bakraoui after failing to establish any link to terrorism.

On 15 March 2016, the two brothers evaded capture during a police raid in Brussels. On 16 March 2016, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States sent information about them to authorities in the Netherlands. They had been tracking Ibrahim El Bakraoui since September 2015.

Authorities found a laptop belonging to El Bakraoui inside a waste container near a house raided following the bombings. It also contained images of the home and the office of the Belgian Prime Minister, Charles Michel, among information on multiple other locations in Brussels.

El Bakraoui has been identified as one of the suicide bombers at the Brussels airport on 22 March 2016.