Thalys Train Attacker Sentenced to Life in Prison for 2015 Foiled Terror Plot

The events date back to August 21, 2015. Ayoub El Khazzani had boarded the train at the Brussels station armed with an AK-47, a pistol, a cutter and 300 rounds of ammunition. The shooter had been overpowered by passengers, including two American soldiers on vacation and in civilian clothes. They had thrown themselves on him, thus preventing him from committing a massacre.

The trial opened on November 16 last, and in its decision, Franck Zientara, the president of the court, recalled that he could have committed "a blind attack" that would have been "particularly deadly" without "a particularly unlikely combination of circumstances" of defective ammunition and "the exceptional courage of the passengers". The court therefore followed the requisitions of the general attorneys who had requested on Tuesday, November 15, life imprisonment for the Moroccan, reports France 24.

In the dock, Ayoub El Khazzani, aged 31, dressed in a checkered shirt, his black hair tied in a small bun, remained emotionless when his sentence of life imprisonment was announced. The young man, 25 years old at the time of the foiled attack, admitted during the trial that his only mission from his sponsor was to kill the American soldiers and certain members of the European Commission who would be on board the train.

But for the court, the shooter had boarded the Thalys with the intention of committing a massacre. His goal was to kill "blindly and indifferently" the some 200 passengers on the train, the president affirmed. Before the court retired to deliberate on Thursday morning, El Khazzani had apologized at length to the victims. He repeatedly said: "I am deeply sorry."

The co-defendants of the shooter, Bilal Chatra, Redouane El Amrani Ezzerrfi and Mohamed Bakkali, were found guilty of having helped El Khazzani and Abaaoud in their journey to join Europe from Syria. They were sentenced to 27, 7 and 25 years in prison respectively.