France train suspect ‘watched jihadi video minutes before attack’

Minutes before he slung an assault rifle across his chest and walked through a high-speed train, the Moroccan suspect in the foiled attack watched a jihadi video on his cellphone, the French prosecutor has said. The actions by Ayoub El-Khazzani on the Amsterdam-to-Paris train Friday night and information from other European authorities on his travels and apparent links to radical Islam prompted a terror investigation, said prosecutor Francois Molins. El-Khazzani, 26, was tackled and tied up by five passengers, including three Americans and a Briton, averting what president Francois Hollande said “could have degenerated into monstrous carnage.”

When we looked at his mobile phone, and he’d said originally that he didn’t have a mobile phone, we were able to see … that in fact it was specifically dedicated to this project,

Prosecutor Francois Molins

French surveillance helped authorities spot the suspect on a May 10 flight from Berlin to Istanbul, then a return flight from Antakya, Turkey, to Tirana, Albania, via Istanbul, Molins said. El-Khazzani denied going to Turkey. He may also have tried to go to Syria. The train incident has highlighted growing difficulties in protecting public spaces from individual attackers. In his speech Tuesday, the French president said the country remains “exposed” to violent extremism, and “this aggression is new proof that we should prepare ourselves for other assaults.”

World France train attack