Brussels explosions: Islamic State mastermind Najim Laachraoui NOT captured at pizza restaurant in Belgium:

Sadly the report below was premature –  Najim Laachraoui is still at large.

 This passion for pizza is proving to be the downfall of this jihadi gang, praise the Lord. Abdeslam was caught when the police noticed that his mate’s mother was ordering extra pizzas to be delivered last week and thus revealed his possible whereabouts.

Belgian police have captured the key suspect in Belgium’s worst terrorist attacks as a heavy security persisted in Brussels after the strike by Islamic State, Belgian media have reported.

Authorities on Wednesday arrested 24-year-old Najim Laachraoui, believed to be one of three men filmed on closed-circuit TV wheeling baggage carts at the airport. 

Laachraoui was arrested in the city’s Anderlecht district, Belgian news site DH reported

Belgian-based journalist Michael Sepphiha tweeted that Laachraoui was arrested at a pizza restaurant. 

Police issued images of the suspect enhanced from the CCTV footage overnight, local time, asking “who recognises this man?”.

According to local news outlet HLN, a taxi driver had contacted police on Tuesday afternoon, after recognising the passengers he took to the airport early in the morning.

He reportedly told investigators the trio had wanted to take five pieces of luggage, but only three would fit into the taxi.

Police rushed to the house where the men were picked up. They found the other suitcases with “heavy nail bombs”, bomb-making chemicals and an Islamic State flag.

The house was said to have been recently let out to new arrivals in the district, suggesting it was a “safe house” for the terror cell rather than a home.

Laachraoui grew up in Schaerbeek and had set up at least one bomb-making factory there in the weeks before Paris. 

A former Catholic schoolboy and electromechanics student, Laachraoui was stopped by police in September, just weeks before the Paris attacks, as he made his way across Europe from Syria. He was in a car with Salah Abdeslam, who later became a key fugitive from the Paris attacks, on their way from Budapest to Brussels when they were stopped. But police waved them on after they convinced officers they were tourists on a trip to Vienna.