France to treat train attack as terrorist plot

Gunman watched extremist video on his phone beforehand, prosecutors say.

In a press conference on August 25, 2015, Paris chief prosecutor Francois Molins (pictured) said that Ayoub El Khazzani was being treated as a suspected terrorist. Miguel Medina/AFP Photo

MARSEILLE // A Moroccan man who boarded a high-speed train to Paris armed with multiple weapons, including a Kalashnikov assault rifle, is being treated as a suspected terrorist who planned to kill a large number of passengers, French prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Ayoub El Khazzani was also carrying 270 rounds of ammunition, a Luger pistol, a bottle of petrol and a box-cutter when he embarked in Brussels last Friday, said Paris prosecutor Francois Molins.

The 25-year-old was overpowered by passengers after being heard loading his Kalashnikov in a toilet shortly after the train crossed the border from Belgium into northern France.

A French-American man was shot and injured in the struggle.

Mr El Khazzani’s claims to investigators that he was only planning to rob passengers were “barely credible”, said Mr Molins, adding that the suspect had grown increasingly evasive in his responses to police and stopped responding entirely on Monday.

The prosecutor outlined a raft of evidence indicating why Mr El Khazzani – who was known to the authorities of at least four countries prior to the attack, and had been identified in France’s so-called “Fiche S”, or state security file, with the third highest of 16 levels in order of perceived danger – was being probed for “attempted murder” as part of a terrorist plot.

This included the fact that in June, Mr El Khazzani flew back from a town in southern Turkey near the Syrian border, and that he watched an extremist video on his mobile phone just before launching last Friday’s attack.

Meanwhile, questions have been raised about the ease with which Mr El Khazzani was able to board the train while heavily armed, with the case focusing attention on the vulnerability of European rail travel to terrorist attack.

In France alone, five million people use trains daily. Only on Eurostar services to London are passengers and their luggage subject to mandatory security checks.

However, while governments, transport officials and security experts admit that stricter precautionary measures must be applied, they say that the sheer volume of rail passengers makes systematic airport-style controls unrealistic.

The French government has announced new measures, including a greater police and military presence at stations and on trains. The country’s SNCF rail network has also said that it will encourage passengers to use a telephone hotline system – already in place to allow travellers to report incidents of misconduct on trains – to alert the authorities to any signs of possible terrorist activity.

The Belgian prime minister Charles Michel has called for a meeting of European Union interior ministers to consider changing the “Schengen” rules under which 26 countries have discontinued border checks. He envisages a significant increase in identity and baggage checks.

The French transport minister Alain Vidal adopted the same theme, telling the Europe 1 radio station that random inspections by specially trained staff was one of the most effective measures for improving safety.

He attracted criticism for adding that such checks should be “discriminatory”, with some commentators suggesting that his advice was at odds with president Francois Hollande’s opposition to racial profiling. But Mr Vidal insisted he preferred “that we discriminate to be effective rather than remain spectators”.

Spain, still scarred by train bombings that left 191 dead 11 years ago, does impose baggage checks, but only for long-distance trains.

More cursory inspections occur on other services but, as one frequent user commented online, “it is a very light security check, nothing like an airport”. Yet the 2004 bombs exploded on commuter trains.

Guillaume Pepy, the head of the SNCF rail network, said after last Friday’s foiled attack: “It must be remembered that rail traffic in France is 20 times greater than air travel. That means the security measures you see in airport would have to [be] multiplied by 20 to cover train services.”

Even if applied only to high-speed and international routes, Mr Pepy said, automatic baggage and identity checks would have to be comprehensive and carried out “in a completely enclosed area like Eurostar” or have limited efficiency.

On Monday, France presented the four passengers who disarmed Mr El Khazzani – three Americans and a Briton – with the country’s highest decoration, the Legion d’Honneur. Their prompt and courageous response ensured that last Friday’s incident ended without loss of life, but no one denies that the outcome could have been far worse.

* With additional reporting by Agence France-Presse