Report: Brussels Terrorists Sought to Target Travelers to Israel, U.S.

Mohamed Abrini, the “terrorist in the white hat” who was the subject of a wide-ranging manhunt after the recent bombings in Brussels, told investigators that part of the plan that he and the other terrorists had intended to undertake was to blow up a bomb in the airport’s terminal – in the room where passengers were waiting to depart for flights to Israel.

Abrini, who was seen absconding from the terminal at the Zaventem airport after two bombs went off on March 22 and went into hiding, told investigators that his role in the terror attack was supposed to have been to sneak into the terminal in the pandemonium created by the first two explosions, and find the gate where Israeli travelers were waiting for their flights – and set off his bomb there, French media reported. Instead, he abandoned the plan and ran away.

In addition, he said that bombs had been prepared to be set off at gates where flights to the U.S. and Russia were to take off.

Abrini said that the mastermind of the plot had been Ibrahim al-Barqawi, one of the terrorists killed in the terror attack. He had chosen the targets, but Abrini, who was supposed to set off the bombs inside the terminal, changed his mind at the last moment. He was captured last week after a several-week manhunt.