Brussels Attackers Committed ’Test Murder’ Before 2016 Bombings, Reveals Co-Conspirator

Aided by his brother Khalid, Ibrahim El Bakraoui had committed a murder at the end of 2014. The victim was a retiree from Jette. It was a "test murder" for the late brothers, reports the daily De Morgen.

The terrorist Osama Krayem, one of the survivors of the March 22, 2016 attacks, provided some surprising information received from Khalid El Bakraoui, one of his collaborators, to the investigators, on December 20, 2016. "Khalid told me that he and Ibrahim had killed someone in the street. A randomly chosen person. He said the police had found the body and that was it. He was smiling when he told me," he confided. "Khalid told me it was an elderly person, and that they wanted to test what it felt like to kill someone," Osama further specified during another hearing on June 19, 2018.

These revelations led the Brussels public prosecutor’s office to launch a call at the end of May 2018 regarding the unsolved case of Paul-André Vanderperren in Jette. He was a 76-year-old pensioner who had been murdered in broad daylight in December 2014 as he was heading to a cafe to watch a football match. The investigators were unable to solve his murder. Last year, the widow of the septuagenarian said her lawyer had told her that the perpetrators of her husband’s murder were almost identified as the late El Bakraoui brothers.