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Brussels airport suicide bomber was an ideal student at school
Suicide bomber Laachraoui was a ‘model student’ at Brussels Catholic school. Veronica Pellegrini, director of the Institut de la Sainte Famille d’Helmet said, “Najim Laachraoui was a very good student”. It is an alarming trend to see bright minds taking up the path of violence.
Brussels suicide bomber Najim Laachraoui, a veteran Islamist fighter in Syria also suspected of making explosive belts for November's Paris attacks, was a model student in a Brussels Catholic high school, said the school's director.
Laachraoui, a 25-year-old Belgian, was one of Tuesday's airport suicide bombers, identifying him as one of the three men in the CCTV image released by police.
"Najim Laachraoui was a very good student," said Veronica Pellegrini, the director of the Institut de la Sainte Famille d'Helmet, a Catholic school in the ethnically mixed east Brussels borough of Schaerbeek.
"He never failed a class," Pellegrini said of Laachraoui, who studied at the school for 6 years, until graduating in 2009. "We haven't heard from him since," she said.
Prosecutors said Laachraoui's DNA was found in houses used by the Paris attackers last year. He left Brussels for Syria in February 2013. Local media have said he has technical training that could mean he was the armourer of the operation.
While the school offers technical studies in fields such as chemistry, and Belgian media say Laachraoui had studied electromechanics, Pellegrini said he did not take such courses in her school, where he only pursued general studies.
Incidentally, The Paris attacks' suspected mastermind, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian killed during a raid in Paris suburb St Denis on Nov. 18, had at 12 won a scholarship to an elite Catholic school.
Time and again we hear of bright young minds going astray. However, these news are quickly becoming a regular feature. This is alarming and should rightly shake up the education system across the world. Why and How are these bright young minds gravitating towards violence? What is common to all these minds? Is it the education system that is disillusioning them? If not then how can our schools and colleges encourage them to find their rightful place in the society? Teachers should be trained to identify problem people early on and counsel them before they go astray.
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