Moroccan national bags life sentence over foiled Paris train attack

A court in France has sentenced a Moroccan national identified as Ayoub el-Khazzani to life in prison over a foiled gun attack on a high-speed train between Brussels and Paris in August 2015.

The French court also found three other men guilty of helping the 31-year-old Moroccan national plan the attack and also issued them sentences of between seven and 27 years as accomplices.

During the attack, Ayoub el-Khazzani was overpowered by fellow passengers on the Thalys train, including two off-duty American soldiers after he had boarded the train with a Kalashnkov and a pistol hidden in his back-pack.

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But when he emerged from the lavatory ready to shoot he was immediately confronted by fellow-passengers and in the fight that followed, his gun initially failed to fire, and he was overpowered and delivered to the police.

While ruling on the matter, on Thursday, the judge said there was no doubt el-Khazzani (who had come to Europe from Syria earlier in 2015 in the company of an Islamic State agent called Abdelhamid Abaooud) had intended to carry out a mass-killing.

“He’d only failed because of an unlikely combination of circumstances, and the bravery of those who intervened,” the judge added.

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