ROME, (Reuters) – The Tunisian man suspected of shooting dead two Swedish football fans in Brussels arrived in Italy’s Lampedusa island in 2011, two Italian government and security sources said, confirming a report by the ANSA news agency.

The suspect spent some time in Italy before moving to Sweden, but was expelled from there under the EU’s “Dublin” rules and returned to Italy, one of the sources said.

He was identified in 2016 by police in Bologna as a subject at risk of Islamist radicalisation and came under observation from the intelligence services, but did not have at the time a significant criminal record, the source said.

Italian authorities lost track of him some time in 2016 and presumed he had again moved abroad, the source added.

In Brussels, Belgian Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne said his country had received an unconfirmed report in 2016 from a foreign police service indicating that the suspected attacker had a “radicalised profile” and wanted to go to a war zone to wage jihad.

ISLAMIC STATE CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY FOR BRUSSELS ATTACK

Islamic State claimed responsibility for Monday’s attack in Brussels, according to the group’s channel on Telegram on Tuesday, which said one of its fighters carried out the attack that killed two people.

A man suspected of shooting dead two Swedish football fans and wounding another in Brussels was a 45-year-old Tunisian who had an asylum application rejected in 2020 but continued to live in Belgium illegally, according to Belgian officials.

After an overnight manhunt, police fatally shot the suspect at a cafe in the Schaerbeek district of northern Brussels on Tuesday morning.