Brussels Attack Hero Speaks Out: Cleaner’s Brave Actions Saved Lives

"It was around 7 p.m. I was working upstairs, in one of the offices of the building. I was going down by elevator to the level 0 to throw away the garbage I had collected. It was the end of my day. I was walking towards the (main) door that opens onto Boulevard d’Ypres to go out and go home. [...] The other, a turnstile already blocked at this hour, leads to the Sainctelette square," recalls Khaled, a cleaning agent by profession, walking in the hallway where the tragedy unfolded on October 16. A few minutes later, the Tunisian terrorist Abdesalem Lassoued kills a Swede and continues to shoot several times with his weapon. "At first I thought I heard a firecracker," the witness says. He sees the assailant chase two people, the Swedish supporter and a man pulling a shopping cart. Panicked, they enter the building through a door that is activated with a badge. "It is supposed to close. But it closes slowly if you don’t push it, that’s how the terrorist was also able to enter."

"We run towards the interior of the building. It was at this moment that I heard a second detonation. I then understood that these were not just firecrackers and that we had to take shelter immediately," continues Khaled, who hides behind a large white pillar. "I’m straight, fixed, I don’t move, I look straight ahead, not in the direction of the terrorist who is on my left, just a few meters away. Our eyes never meet. But I tell myself that he must have seen me. The man with the cart, he is in front of me and is hiding behind the