European ministers are to gather in Paris for security talks over the weekend following last week’s “targeted and premeditated” attack on a high-speed train that was foiled by passengers, it was announced yesterday.
The meeting “will ... look at very concrete proposals,” French Minister of the Interior Bernard Cazeneuve said, just hours after French prosecutors charged 25-year-old Moroccan Ayoub El Khazzani over the attack.
El Khazzani boarded a high-speed train in Brussels on Friday last week armed with a Kalashnikov rifle and 270 rounds of ammunition, as well as a Luger pistol, a bottle of gasoline and a box-cutter.
Photo: AP
He walked out of a toilet cubicle with the weapons, but was stopped by several people, including two off-duty US servicemen, their friend and a 62-year-old British consultant, who have since been given France’s top honour, the Legion d’Honneur.
Saturday’s meeting is to see ministers from Germany, Britain, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland, as well as France come together.
Khazzani was questioned for four days before being taken barefoot, handcuffed and with a mask over his eyes to a Paris courthouse to be charged on Tuesday.
His lawyer, Mani Ayadi, slammed Khazzani’s treatment as “outrageous and disgraceful,” saying he should not have been left barefoot, but prosecutors said the suspect refused to wear shoes.
Khazzani claims that he was homeless and had stumbled upon the weapons stash in a Brussels park, which he intended to use to rob first-class passengers in the Amsterdam-Paris train.
However, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said the claim was “barely credible,” giving a raft of evidence for why Khazzani was being probed for “attempted murder” as part of a “targeted and premeditated” terrorist plot.
Khazzani bought his first-class ticket on the day of the attack at Midi train station in Brussels, paying 149 euros (US$170) in cash — discrediting his claim that he was penniless. The ticket seller asked if he wanted to travel earlier, on a less-crowded train, but he refused.
Khazzani also traveled to Turkey and back in May and June, creating suspicion he may have spent time in Syria.
In other developments, the city of Sacramento, California, said it is planning a parade for the three Americans hailed as heros in the train drama, who grew up in the area.
Anthony Sadler, 23, returned to California on Tuesday, walking off a commercial plane at Sacramento International Airport accompanied by his parents. The family landed in Sacramento after taking a private jet to Portland, Oregon, after Columbia Sportswear chief executive Timothy Boyle had made the jet available to fly the young men’s mothers to France over the weekend.
Sadler’s friends, US Air Force airman Spencer Stone, 23, and Oregon National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos, 22, were still at a US military base in Germany, where Stone is undergoing treatment for injuries he received during the incident.
Additional reporting by AP
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