The man who was detained for four days in March on suspicion of being the third bomber in the Brussels Airport attack says he is a “broken man” and still angry at the media and police over his treatment.
Fayçal Cheffou told Belgian broadcasters VRT and RTBF in an interview, aired Thursday, that he was detained at gunpoint in front of Brussels’ Palais de Justice on March 24, two days after twin bombings in the Belgian capital killed 32 people and left hundreds wounded.
“I thought I was going to be killed,” Cheffou told RTBF, after he was stopped while traveling in a car with two others.
He said he didn’t know why police had arrested him “until investigators asked me directly if I was the third man at the airport.”
At the time, police were searching for the “man in the hat,” seen on CCTV walking with the two suicide bombers, Brahim el-Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui, at Brussels’ Zaventem airport on March 22.
Terror suspect Mohamed Abrini, captured in the Brussels suburb of Anderlecht on April 8, later confessed that he was the man in the hat, caught on camera fleeing Zaventem after the blasts.
Previously, Cheffou was identified by the taxi driver who drove the bombers to Zaventem airport.
“It’s crazy, on the basis of a photo everything is wrapped up, done and dusted,” Cheffou said. “In this paranoia people no longer think, the police reason with their emotions more than their reason. The real verification work wasn’t done by investigators, but by the instructing judge.”
Cheffou claimed he was mistreated by police, who he said hit him and left him naked and injured in his cell with “blood everywhere in the room” and no water.
Federal prosecutors declined to comment Friday morning.
Cheffou was eventually released after providing an alibi based on phone records that showed he was elsewhere at the time of the attacks.
“I’m angry at the media outlets that put me in this situation, I’m angry at the police who didn’t work as they should have,” he said in Thursday’s interview. “They haven’t said sorry, and worse, I’m still a suspect.”
