El Khazzani, a 25-year-old who boarded the high-speed train in Brussels on Friday armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, a Luger automatic pistol, ammunition and a box-cutter, is now being questioned by anti-terror investigators, though he insists he had only been seeking to rob passengers.
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He said a formal terrorism investigation had been opened, adding that other European authorities had passed on information about the suspect’s travels and links to radical Islam.
He also dismissed as “absurd” claims by the suspect that he found the stash of weapons and mobile phone in a park where he was sleeping rough the night before.
CNN reports that Khazzani’s lawyer, Sophie David, says that her client had been living on the streets in Brussels.
The gunman was subdued by a group of three American friends and a British businessman. Mark Moogalian, a Franco-American English teacher who was shot in the neck while trying to stop El Khazzani is still hospitalised.
El-Khazzani was carrying 270 bullets and a bottle of gasoline, according to French prosecutor Francois Molins.
France24 reports that “The only entry in Khazzani’s S-file is a flight he took from Berlin to Istanbul in May 2015”, which many in the French media have taken to suggest that Khazzani traveled to Syria. But his explanation grew less and less lucid, the prosecutor said, and the suspect eventually stopped speaking to French investigators at all.
“We’re just very proud, very proud of him and so happy that he’s okay”, said Alek’s mother, Karen.
The Paris prosecutor planned a news conference Tuesday afternoon.
Stone managed to get the attacker in a headlock, while Skarlatos ripped the guns from his hands.
He says Stone is being treated for a laceration to his thumb, for which a full recovery is expected with ongoing therapy, as well as a “non-critical” eye injury and other minor wounds. It’s not clear when Stone will be transferred back to the U.S.
The guardsman’s stepmother says he will stay in Germany until Stone is released, and then fly to New York with him.
At Sacramento State University, where Sadler is a senior, president Robert S. Nelsen said he looked forward to thanking the kinesiology major in person when he returns to class.
Sadler “is an global hero, and so are his two friends”, said Nelsen, the president of Sacramento State.
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They arrived in Sacramento after taking a private jet to Portland, Oregon. A man who has asked to remain anonymous reportedly threw himself at the gunman when he was still in the train’s toilet, strapping on weapons. “When he sets his mind on what he wants to do, he just does it – which is one of the reasons I wasn’t surprised when I heard he went after the actual gunman”.
