Sophie David, the French lawyer appointed to 26-year-old Ayoub el Khazzani, said that her client was “dumbfounded” he was being considered a terrorist. He is just a hungry homeless person, she said he said.
As for the automatic weapon he possessed on the train, a Kalashnikov, a choice of many who have committed terrorist attacks, along with the handgun and sharp box-cutter knives, those he simply found. David said he told her he intended only to use them to steal money to buy food.
“A few days later (after finding weapons) he decided to get on a train that some other homeless people told him would be full of wealthy people traveling from Amsterdam to Paris,” David said. “And he hoped to feed himself by armed robbery.”
She said that her client had intended nothing more than to steal from passengers and then shoot out a window and exit the Amsterdam to Paris train by jumping from it.
That’s his story and not only is he sticking to it but it sounds as if his lawyer is on board, too. She did not simply convey to media that he had told her he was not a terrorist but a train robber, she also said she believes him. Her client, she said, is “somebody very weakened physically, as if he suffered from malnutrition.”
American train heroes
The three Americans who attacked and beat unconscious the would-be attacker, Spencer Stone, 23, Alek Skarlatos, 22 and Anthony Sadler, 23 and Chris Norman, the middle-aged Brit who helped them to restraint Khazzani, are all being hailed as heroes.
Stone was treated in hospital for cuts to the back of his head and for a badly cut thumb which had to be reattached. He has been released and passed on his thanks to the French nurses and doctors. One man, a French-American struck by a bullet, is still in hospital but out of danger.
Officials said Khazzani had been on their radar after he was identified as a member of a radical Islamist movement. He lived mostly between Spain and Belgium and had been to Syria recently; he was, police say, a low-level drug dealer.
So just a robbery gone bad? From what Stone encountered it does not sound like one. He said that Khazzani was trying to fire multiple shots from his AK-47 but the gun jammed. “He seemed like he was ready to fight to the end,” Stone told a press conference.
He added three words: “So were we.”
