The appeal trial of the attack foiled by passengers in a Thalys in 2015 opens this Monday before the Special Assize Court of Paris. The shooter, the Moroccan Ayoub El Khazzani, 26 years old at the time of the events, will be the only defendant in the box, his three co-defendants at first instance having waived appeal. El Khazzani had been sentenced to life imprisonment with 22 years of security for “attempted terrorist assassinations” in December 2020.
On August 21, 2015, Ayoub El Khazzani went to Brussels on the Thalys Amsterdam-Paris train with a Kalashnikov, a pistol, a cutter and 300 ammunition. Passengers, including American soldiers on vacation, managed to control it and only three people were injured.
At the first trial, El khazzani claimed that, disarmed by the smile of a passenger, he had given up shooting at the last moment. That day, his mission was to attack the American military as well as members of the European Commission supposed to be on the train. A version ” whimsical “, had judged the Court, for which only” the heroic intervention “of the passengers had prevented him from killing” blindly and indifferently “.
Wave of attacks
This attempted attack was part of the wave of terrorist attacks that peaked on November 13, 2015, the judges also pointed out. It was indeed Abdelhamid Abaaoud, future coordinator and shooter of the attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis, who briefly trained Ayoub El Ghazzani in Syria and then joined Europe with him.
For this, the two men had followed “ the migrant route behind Bilal Chatra, sentenced to 27 years in prison for playing scout. It is this same route that was taken by the commandos of 13-November. Another common point, Mohamed Bakkali, sentenced to 25 years in prison in this Thalys case for his role as a conveyor, was sentenced to 30 years in prison last June for his involvement in the logistics of the November 13 attacks.