Najim Laachraoui was Islamic State guard known as Abou Idriss, according to lawyer of former Syria hostage Nicolas Hénin

One of the two suicide bombers who killed 16 people at Brussels’ Zaventem airport last month has been identified as a former Islamic State prison guard in Syria.

French journalists seized in Syria by the terror group in 2013 have identified Najim Laachraoui, the presumed bomb-maker for both the Brussels attacks and those carried out in Paris in November last year, as one of the captors who held them hostage for 10 months, their lawyer said.

“I can confirm that he was the jailer of my clients,” said Marie-Laure Ingouf, a lawyer for two of the four journalists who were freed in April 2014, confirming French media reports. Ingouf said one of her clients, Nicolas Hénin, had “formally identified” the bomber.

Laachraoui, a 24-year-old Belgian national, blew himself up at the airport on 22 March with Ibrahim El Bakraoui, whose brother Khalid detonated another suicide bomb at the Maelbeek metro station shortly afterwards, killing a further 16 people.

Paris and Brussels: the links between the attackers Read more

French media said the journalists had recognised Laachraoui as one of their captors, known to them as Abou Idriss, when his photograph was published in the aftermath of the Brussels attacks.

They had earlier identified another of their jailers as Mehdi Nemmouche, a Frenchman currently in custody after killing four people in an attack on Brussels’ Jewish Museum in May 2014, Le Parisien reported, and a third as Salim Benghalem, an Islamic State recruiter sentenced in absentia in France.

The paper said the journalists had described Abou Idriss, who had a Belgian accent, as less violent than Nemmouche, and said he occasionally asked them “scientific questions he expected them to answer”. The Belgian seemed to be “someone of intelligence, composed, capable of adapting rapidly to new situations”, Le Parisien quoted an interior ministry source as saying.

Belgian prosecutors have said Laachraoui, an electrical engineering student who dropped out of university in Brussels, travelled to Syria in February 2013 to join Isis forces as a foreign fighter. He next resurfaced crossing the border between Hungary and Austria in September 2015 under a false name.

French prosecutors have linked him to the Paris attacks that killed 130 people two months later. Laachraoui’s DNA was found on a suicide vest and a piece of cloth found at at the Bataclan concert hall, where 90 people died, and also on explosives used at the Stade de France.

Earlier this month, Brussels police arrested Mohamed Abrini, the “man in the hat” who was caught on CCTV cameras at the airport with Laachraoui and Ibrahim El Bakraoui and is suspected of preparing to detonate a third bomb before fleeing.

A Swedish national, Osama Krayem, who was filmed on CCTV talking to Khalid El Bakraoui minutes before the metro station bomb exploded, has also been arrested and charged in connection with both the Paris and Brussels attacks.

Brussels transport authorities announced on Friday that Maelbeek station, near the main European Union headquarters, will reopen on Monday after being closed since the bombing. Repair work will be completed by Friday evening, a spokeswoman said.

Train services to Zaventem airport, which was extensively damaged in the attacks, will also resume on Friday night. The airport itself partially reopened two weeks ago and is expected to be fully functioning in June.