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Thwarted train gunman Ayoub El Khazzani has laughed at accusations he was trying to carry out a terrorist attack on the Amsterdam to Paris express, his lawyer has claimed.
Morocco-born El Khazzani, 26, says he does not see why his actions on the Thalys train on Friday have caused such an outcry and insisted that he was only interested in ‘robbing the passengers’.
His lawyer, Sophie David, said the gunman appeared ‘very, very thin and very haggard’ when she met with him at a police station in Arras, northern France.
Meanwhile, the suspect’s father defended him as a ‘good boy’ today, and insisted that he would never want to kill anyone.
Scrap dealer Mohamed Khazzani, 64, broke down in tears as he recalled the moment police knocked on the door of his rundown flat to tell him his son had been arrested with a Kalashnikov on board a packed Paris-bound high-speed train.
The greying dad-of-six, who lives in the southern Spanish port city of Algeciras after emigrating from his native Morocco, told MailOnline: ‘They’re saying Ayoub is a terrorist but I just cannot believe what I am hearing.
It’s as if Ayoub is dead now. I know I’ll never see him again now. I’m sure he’ll go to jail for a long time.
Mohamed Khazzani, terror suspect’s father
‘I haven’t eaten anything or slept since the police came round yesterday.
‘They asked me if I knew where he was and when I said France they told me he had got himself into serious trouble and explained what had happened.
‘I’m still in shock and haven’t even told my wife Zahara yet who is in Morocco visiting relatives and won’t be back until later this week.’
He added: ‘There was no work for him here and it’s the only reason he went [to France].
‘You should ask them why they’re doing that to young people, selling them empty promises and then dumping them on the street.’
Speaking in broken Spanish despite his six years in the southern Spanish port of Algeciras, he added: ‘My son a terrorist? The only terrorism he is guilty of is terrorism for bread because he hasn’t got enough money to feed himself properly.’
Mr Khazzani spoke out from his rubbish-strewn flat on the fifth floor of a dilapidated eleventh-floor tower black in the rundown Algeciras neighbourhood of El Saladillo.
He admitted he squats in the grubby three-bed apartment, which he was said was owned by a bank after the previous owner was evicted.
‘I work day and night trying to make ends meet and this is how I live.
‘My wife is away at the moment with one of my three daughters but the other two who are aged 15 and 17 still live here.
‘Ayoub lived in Algeciras for a year and a half before moving to France.
‘His older brothers Imran and Suleiman live in Morocco which is where my wife and I as well as Ayoub were born.
‘Ayoub was religious and never smoked or drank alcohol.’
He finished: ‘It’s as if Ayoub is dead now. I know I’ll never see him again now. I’m sure he’ll go to jail for a long time.
‘Now I just want to try to get on with my life and not be bothered any more.
‘This is the first and last time I will be speaking about this.’
Members of the mosque where El-Khazzani used to pray today condemned his actions.
Mohamed Ali Mustafa Amar of the Al-Jazeera Cultural Society said: ‘Ayoub didn’t have a fixed mosque but he would sometimes pray here and his dad cleaned it on a voluntary basis in exchange for the odd tip.
‘I didn’t know the son well but he was very reserved and didn’t go into detail about his religion.
‘If I’d had an inkling he was going to do anything like what he’s done, I’ve have reported him to the authorities straight away.
‘We totally condemn what’s happened. It’s shocked us all. We support a policy of zero tolerance against people like him.
‘The few bad apples like him affect us all because they give Muslims a bad name.
‘All good Muslims know our religion doesn’t permit us to kill others.
‘We can end up facing discrimination from people because of people like him and get funny looks when we board trains or buses because of our beards and that is something I can understand but that shouldn’t happen.
‘What we need to do is stop this sort of thing from happening. My mother, sister or cousin could have been on that train.’
He added: ‘My understanding is Ayoub had been a bit of a party animal when he lived in Madrid and that had caused friction with his dad.
‘I wouldn’t say they had a bad relationship but they were very reserved with each other.
‘He used to spend his days outside a cafe-bar in El Saladillo. He didn’t have many friends here and he never had a girlfriend as far as I know.
‘We weren’t aware he had spent time in prison.’
A fellow worshipper, who asked not to be named, added: ‘You could tell when he talked that he’d been into his partying when he lived in Madrid.
We totally condemn what’s happened. It’s shocked us all. We support a policy of zero tolerance against people like him.
Mohamed Ali Mustafa Amar, Al-Jazeera Cultural Society
‘He said he used to go to nightclubs and loved popping pills.
‘I don’t know if he drank alcohol but I imagine he did.
‘But he spoke about those days as if they were in the past when he lived in Algeciras and was a very reserved person while he was here.
‘He used to play football at a pitch opposite the mosque and I’d often see him with a rucksack on his back and his football boots slung round his neck.
‘But I didn’t have a clue he had become radicalised.
‘He seemed like a normal person. When we heard he was the gunman on that train, it was totally unexpected.’
Lawyer Sophie David told Le Parisien newspaper today that El Khazzani ‘can’t understand why this affair has generated such publicity’.
‘He denies being involved in any kind of terrorist plot. The suggestion [that he had embarked on a terrorist attack] made him laugh.’
She added: ‘[I saw] somebody who was very sick, somebody very weakened physically, as if he suffered from malnutrition, very, very thin and very haggard.’
She said he was barefoot and wearing only a white hospital shirt and boxer shorts for the interview at a police station in Arras, northern France, where the train stopped after the incident.
El Khazzani remains in custody at the headquarters of the French DGSI anti-terrorism police at Levallois-Perret, Paris, where he was taken on Saturday morning. He can be held up until Tuesday evening without charge.
El Khazzani maintains he found the arsenal of weapons he had attempted to use on unarmed passengers of the international express train on Friday evening under a bush in a park by chance.
‘He says he found this Kalashnikov automatic rifle, his Luger pistol and a mobile phone in a suitcase, which had been left in a park close to the Brussels railway station in Belgium where he slept rough,’ his lawyer, who has not been named told Le Parisien.
‘He has been sleeping rough since his identity papers were stolen.’
[I saw] somebody who was very sick, somebody very weakened physically, as if he suffered from malnutrition, very, very thin and very haggard.
Suspect’s lawyer, Sophie David
El Khazzani refused to answer any questions or give French police his name or his parent’s names but anti-terrorist officers confirmed his identity from his fingerprints.
The suspect was already on government officials’ radars in four European countries before he carried out the alleged attack on Friday evening.
He is reported to have been deemed a terrorist threat following the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, and to have fought with ISIS in Syria earlier this year.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Saturday that Spanish authorities had flagged the jihadi to French officials last February because he belongs to the ‘radical Islamist movement’ – something El-Khazzani appeared to support on his Facebook page, which has since been deleted.
El-Khazzani, who was reportedly radicalised while living in Spain, was subsequently placed on an intelligence watch list in France.
On Saturday, officials confirmed through fingerprints their suspicions that the Thalys train terrorist was the same man who had been on their radar.
Although Cazeneuve did not give a name, a source familiar with the case named the shooter as El-Khazzani, Reuters reports. The source said he was believed to have flown from Berlin to Istanbul on May 10 this year. Turkey is a preferred flight destination for would-be jihadists heading for Syria.
El-Khazzani is thought to have received military training with ISIS there, before traveling to Syria to fight with the terror group, The Telegraph reports
The suspect had left France in 2014, before traveling to Syria and returning to France to assemble a horde of deadly weapons, it is said.
In Spain, he lived in Madrid between 2007 and 2010 before moving to the southern port of Algeciras.
He was arrested in Spain at least once for a drug-related offence, the Spanish counter-terrorism source said.
Cazeneuve said the man had also lived in Belgium and that inquiries ‘should establish precisely the activities and travels of this terrorist’.
French newspaper Le Voix du Nord reported that the jihadi may have had connections to a group involved in a suspected Islamist shooting in Belgium in January. The Belgian government confirmed an inquiry into the shooting is under way, but would not comment further on any potential link.
In total, El-Khazzani had been identified as a terrorist threat by Spanish, French, German and Belgium intelligence services, it is reported.
However, it is unclear whether he was placed under surveillance in any of the countries. The motive behind Friday’s attack also remains unclear.
French authorities have been on high alert since the Charlie Hebdo massacre, during which 11 people inside the satirical magazine’s offices were shot dead by brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi. As they left the building, the terrorists also killed a French National Police officer on the street.
During Friday’s attack, El-Khazzani allegedly burst out of a toilet cubicle on the train and fired his rifle once, wounding a French-American citizen.
However, his weapon then jammed, giving his would-be victims their chance to pounce.
Air Force serviceman Spencer Stone, of Carmichael, California, Alek Skarlatos, a National Guardsman from Oregon, and their childhood friend, Anthony Sadler, a university senior, confronted El-Khazzani and wrestled his rifle, a handgun and nine magazines of bullets from him.
They then shoved him to the ground and beat him unconscious, with the help of British businessman Chris Norman, 62, it is reported.
In the attack, El-Khazzani pulled out a box cutter knife, slashed Mr Stone in the neck and ‘almost cut his thumb off’ in the melee.
But despite his injuries Mr Stone gave first aid to another man bleeding heavily from a neck wound before the train made an unscheduled stop in the northern French town of Arras ten minutes later, where it was met by dozens of armed police and paramedics.
El-Khazzani was arrested at the station.
The four men have since been commended for their bravery by President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron.
