[Mail] The uncle, who asked not to be named, said they had been bright school pupils before going off the rails. He said: ‘They were really nice guys. They were very serious and they studied a lot.’
It was around this time they worked for a cleaning company at the airport, he said.
But they dropped out of school, turning to crime, and in 2011 Ibrahim was jailed for nine years for shooting at police with a Kalashnikov rifle following a bungled robbery. The next year, Khalid was sentenced to five years for car jackings. He too had been armed with a Kalashnikov.
The brothers had been radicalised in prison, the uncle said. Speaking at his home in Laeken, the working-class neighbourhood where the brothers grew up, he said: ‘Ibrahim didn’t have any money. That is why he did the robbery, because he wanted to get some money. |