A gunman who fired shots on a Brussels-Paris express train was charged today with attempted multiple murder in the cause of Islamist terrorism last night as police concluded that he had likely accomplices.
Evidence that Ayoub El Khazzani, 25, had at least one associate came from the fact that his Facebook entry had been erased on Saturday, a day after he was overpowered by four men after shooting an American passenger in the back, police said.
El Khazzani, a Moroccan who lived in Spain, had provided “fantasy” explanations for his actions aboard the Thalys train and refused cooperation in four days of questioning before he was taken before a judge to be charged, said François Molins, the Paris prosecutor.
Citing evidence of premeditation, the prosecutor said that El Khazzani, had listened on his telephone to jihadist calls to arms on the Thalys express shortly before emerging bare-chested from a toilet brandishing an east-German AK-M assault rifle, a Luger pistol and carrying nearly 300 rounds of ammunition. “Ayoub el Khazzani watched YouTube audio files whilst already on the Thalys train in which an individual called on the faithful to fight and take up arms in the name of the Prophet,” Mr Molins said.
He dismissed as nonsense El Khazzani’s claims to have been intent only on robbery, saying that he had been “resolute and determined” in an attempt to shoot as many passengers as possible among the 550 aboard the train. “He faces charges for attempted murder in connection with a terrorist organisation.... All the passengers on the train were targets,” Mr Molins said. El Khazzani had embraced radical Islam at a mosque in Algeciras, the Spanish town where he had lived with his father, he added.
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El Khazzani was detained in Arras after Anthony Sadler, Spencer Stone and Alek Skarlatos, three young Americans, along with Chris Norman, a 62-year-old British expatriate, subdued him. That followed a scuffle in which he shot Mark Moogalian, 51, an American who lives in Paris. In the first official account of events aboard the train, Mr Molins confirmed that the first passenger to confront El Khazzani was a young Frenchman who has requested anonymity. The man had grabbed El Khazzani and pinned him for 15 seconds against a luggage rack after he emerged from the toilet in the passage between carriages. The gunman escaped into the first-class carriage where the Americans tackled him, the prosecutor said.
El Khazzani, who described himself as homeless, had bought his first class train ticket with 149 euros in cash and declined to board an earlier train that was proposed by the ticket clerk, the prosecutor said.
A raid by Belgian police in the Molenbeek district of Brussels -- a heavily Islamist quarter -- had shown that El Khazzani had recently lived with his sister there, Mr Molins said. Named by Belgian media as Oum Badr, the 22-year-old sister posted last year on social networks “My brother is my heart, my second pair of eyes. May Allah protect him.”
In coordinated raids, police detained 14 people in Spain and Morocco yesterday in an operation that they said was aimed at dismantling a network for recruiting fighters for the Islamic State (IS) group. There was no apparent link with Khazzani.
Police are scrutinising his Facebook and other internet connections in the hope of tracing his movements and contacts moving around Europe over the past year. He had lived recently in Cologne, Vienna and Brussels as well as France, the prosecutor said.
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Investigators assume that El Khazzani had reached Syria after German police identified him from the Spanish and French watch lists as a potential suspect as he flew from Berlin to Istanbul in May this year. He returned to western Europe via Albania in June, Mr Molins disclosed.
From February to April last year, he worked for three months in the Paris area for Lycamobile, a mobile telephone operator. Alain Jochimek, the company’s French chief, said that his temporary contract had not been renewed because he lacked a permit to work in France. He had delivered brochures and put up posters in phone shops. “I can say that things did not go too badly,” said Mr Jochimek. He was responding to a claim by El Khazzani’s father, a Spanish resident, that the company had mistreated him.
El Khazzani had joined his father, an iron scrap-merchant, in Algeciras from Morocco in 2007 at the age of 18. He was arrested on drug offences while trying to make a living doing odd jobs. “He sold hash from time like a lot of people, to pay for food and rent but he wasn’t a dealer,” according to a building worker called Mohamed who was quoted in Spanish media. “He was pretty much a good guy” who placed football and “went very little to the mosque.”
In Paris, President Hollande told a gathering of French ambassadors that France must prepare for further attacks after four separate murderous episodes so far this year, beginning with the massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine in January.
“The aggression that took place on Friday... which could have degenerated into a monstrous carnage... is fresh proof that we must prepare for other attacks and therefore protect ourselves,” Mr Hollande said. On Monday, the President awarded the Legion of Honour to the four US and British men who disarmed El Khazzani