Brussels Attacks: Wrongly Accused ’Man in the Hat’ Suspect Cleared After 4-Year Legal Battle

In a message posted on his Facebook account, Fayçal expressed his joy at this decision. "It’s finally over! 4 and a half years of struggle against false police accusations. Today, I am free alhamdoulliah," he wrote.

While he was parked at the foot of the federal prosecutor’s office, rue aux Laines in Brussels, in the company of two other people, the Brussels then independent journalist did not think he could be arrested, on March 24, 2016. Yet his name had already been circulating in the police services since March 22, 2016. An agent thought he had recognized him in the airport images. The latter had crossed him at the time of the "Parc Maximilien" where hundreds of refugees had set up their camp at the end of 2015.

Fayçal was suspected at least of proselytism, of recruiting candidates for jihad by the general intelligence services. The day after the explosions at Brussels Airport and Maelbeek metro station, which resulted in a final toll of 32 dead and 340 injured, the authorities arrested the former journalist, then placed him in detention for four days. This, due to several troubling elements.

Subsequently, he was indicted by the Public Prosecutor’s Office. After four years of investigation, irrefutable evidence showed that he was not present at the two attack sites. Better, the arrest of the real "man with the hat", Mohamed Abrini, proved his innocence. The former journalist was definitively cleared last Tuesday.