On 21 August 2015, a shooting and knife attack took place on a Thalys train on its way from Amsterdam to Paris. The perpetrator, 25-year-old Moroccan national Ayoub El Khazzani, was confronted by French, American, and British passengers who had noticed him carrying weapons onboard. El Khazzani injured two of the passengers with gunshots and knife slashes before he was subdued. A third person was injured while breaking the glass of an emergency alarm.
For their heroism, six of the intervening passengers received the Legion of Honour, France's highest decoration. El Khazzani initially claimed to be only a robber, but later confessed that he had wanted to "kill Americans" as revenge for bombings in Syria.
Attack
Thalys passenger train 9364 from Amsterdam to Paris crossed the Belgian border to France at approximately 17:45 CEST on 21 August 2015. A 25-year-old Moroccan man named Ayoub El Khazzani emerged from the lavatory room of car No. 12. He was shirtless and brandishing a Draco carbine. In addition to the folding-stock carbine with a 30-round magazine, he was wearing a knapsack containing eight more loaded magazines, a 9 mm Luger M80 pistol, a utility knife, and a bottle of gasoline.
As El Khazzani exited the lavatory, he encountered 28-year-old Frenchman "Damien A." On seeing the heavily armed El Khazzani, Damien attempted to restrain the gunman, but was overpowered and fell to the floor. Seated nearby, American-born Frenchman Mark Moogalian (age 51) saw the scuffle, got up, and in the ensuing struggle wrested the rifle from El Khazzani. As Moogalian turned to move his wife out of harm's way, El Khazzani pulled out a concealed 9 mm Luger M80 pistol and shot Moogalian in the back, with the bullet passing through his lung and exiting via his neck. Moogalian fell to the floor and remained still, playing dead. El Khazzani retrieved his dropped carbine, walked to the passenger area and attempted to fire the weapon at the occupants of the car, but the weapon misfired.
Sitting about 10 metres (30 ft) down the aisle from El Khazzani were three American friends, two of them off-duty members of the United States Armed Forces: 23-year-old Airman First Class Spencer Stone, 22-year-old Specialist Alek Skarlatos, and 23-year-old Anthony Sadler. Alarmed by the sound of the gunshot that injured Moogalian, and seeing the assailant with an assault rifle, Skarlatos cried out to his friends "Get him!" Stone moved first, running up the aisle, straight at the gun-wielding El Khazzani and putting him into a chokehold. El Khazzani dropped the carbine, but repeatedly cut Stone in the hand, head, and neck with the utility knife; Stone's thumb was nearly severed. Skarlatos seized the jammed rifle off the floor and began "muzzle-thumping" El Khazzani about the head, while Stone continued his choke-hold. El Khazzani fell unconscious. In a video taken in the immediate aftermath, an American voice can be heard exclaiming, "Dude, I tried to shoot him."
Chris Norman, 62, a British passenger, and a French train driver helped to hold down El Khazzani, whom Norman later described as having "eyes devoid of humanity," and they used Norman's T-shirt to tie his arms behind his back. About his joining the struggle to subdue the shooter, Norman said, "I'm not going to be the guy who dies sitting down." "If you're going to die, try to do something about it."
Skarlatos then swept the other cars for more gunmen with the assault rifle and pistol in hand. He noted that the assault rifle was jammed and the pistol was missing a magazine and had no rounds in the chamber; neither gun was fire-ready. Stone, a military-trained medic, tried to stop the severe bleeding from Moogalian's gunshot wound by wrapping his shirt around the injury. This proved ineffective, so he inserted two fingers into the neck wound and pushed down on an artery, which stopped the bleeding.
The train was carrying 554 passengers and was passing Oignies in the Pas-de-Calais department when the attack took place, and it was rerouted to the station of Arras. Moogalian was airlifted to the University Hospital in Lille, while Stone was later treated for thumb and eye injuries and other wounds. The remaining passengers were taken to Arras, where they were searched and identified before being allowed to proceed to Paris.
Assailant
Ayoub El Khazzani (born 3 September 1989, also spelled El-Khazzani and el-Qazzani) from Morocco was identified as the assailant by French and Spanish authorities; he had boarded the train in Brussels. He carried no identification but was identified by his fingerprints. He had resided in Aubervilliers, Seine-Saint-Denis, France, since 2014. He was originally from Tétouan in northern Morocco and moved to Spain in 2007, two years after his father had legalized his status there. He was an employee at the mobile phone operator firm Lycamobile for two months in early 2014 before having to leave due to not having the right work papers.
El Khazzani was known to French authorities and had been tagged with a fiche "S" (S file or security file), the highest warning level for French state security. He had been similarly profiled by Belgian, Spanish, and German authorities. He had reportedly lived in the Spanish cities of Madrid and Algeciras from 2007 to March 2014. During his time in Spain, he attracted the attention of authorities after making speeches defending jihad, attending a known radical mosque, and being involved in drug trafficking. He then moved to France, and the Spanish authorities informed the French of their suspicions. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that he had moved to Belgium first in 2015. He had reportedly spent time between May and July in Syria before moving to France.
Motives and confession
El Khazzani initially told his lawyer that he was simply a homeless man who, while sleeping in a Brussels park, found a suitcase containing a rifle and pistol, and that he had no intention to massacre the passengers but planned to rob them so that he might eat. However, authorities said that his explanations became less plausible with each questioning and that he had eventually stopped talking to investigators; the prosecutor François Molins called El Khazzani's story "barely credible." He said El Khazzani had listened to a "YouTube audio file in which the individual exhorted his followers to raise arms and fight in the name of the prophet" and that his Internet browsing history showed "clear evidence of terrorist intent." Prosecutors discovered the files on his phone, which they say he listened to immediately prior to the attack.
In December 2016, El Khazzani confessed to French courts that he had come from Syria and had traveled to Europe for the express purpose of killing Americans in revenge for bombings in Syria. He told a French judge, "I'm a real jihadist, but we do not kill women and children. I am not a slaughterer. I am a noble fighter. I am a soldier." French authorities did not believe El Khazzani's assertions that he wasn't planning a mass killing in light of the nine fully loaded magazines he had brought on board in order to reload his weapon. Of El Khazzani's claim that he decided against murder once he had seen the Americans, Stone told the court, "If he'd wanted to stop he wouldn't have tried to kill me three times."
Possible source of weapons
The French newspaper La Voix du Nord said that the gunman in the Thalys attack may have had connections to groups targeted by the Belgian counter-terror operation, and authorities investigated the link. One of the gunmen in the 2015 Île-de-France attacks, Amedy Coulibaly, had purchased automatic weapons and a rocket launcher from Belgian gangs, allegedly in a black market near Brussels-South railway station, the station where El Khazzani boarded the train.
Legal proceedings
Preliminary charges were filed against El Khazzani on 25 August 2015 by the Paris prosecutor's office for attempted murder in connection with terrorism, possession of weapons in connection with terrorism, and participation in a terrorist conspiracy. He was remanded in custody. On 16 November 2020, he and three suspected accomplices were put on trial in a Paris court. The other three are Bilal Chatra from Algeria, Mohamed Bakkali and Redouane Sebbar. Their trial went forward in November 2020 and Spencer Stone and Alek Skarlatos were scheduled to testify, but Stone was hospitalized and thus unable to be called by the prosecution.
El Khazzani: Was convicted of attempted murders and conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism, and received life imprisonment followed by deportation from France. El Khanazzi claimed at the trial that Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who led the terrorist cell which had perpetrated the January 2015 Île-de-France attacks and had been killed in a raid on 18 November 2015, had organized the train attack.
Three other men were tried on charges of having helped the attacker, and others, travel from Syria to Belgium and of having aided his preparations for the assault.
Bilal Chatra from Algeria was sentenced to 27 years in prison with a lifetime ban from returning to French territory. It was found that he helped El Khazzani and Abaaoud travel between Belgium and Syria. The court found the evidence supported Chatra being in Brussels at the time of the attack, something which he had denied.
Mohamed Bakkali was sentenced to 25 years in prison and a lifetime ban from returning to French territory. According to the prosecution, Bakkali had chauffeured a vehicle to Hungary and Germany to take El Khazzani and Abaaoud to an apartment in Brussels. During the court proceeding, he maintained his innocence. The judge said that the court did not find these protestations credible and added that police investigations had found many telephone calls proving that he was a close associate of the El Bakraoui brothers, who had killed themselves and victims in the 2016 Brussels suicide bombings.
Redouane El Amrani Ezzerrifi, a 28-year-old Moroccan, was sentenced to seven years in prison. He had aided three people to join the Islamic State in Syria.
Involved passengers
The following passengers were noted by the press for their involvement in the incident:
- Damien A., a 28-year-old French banker, the first passenger to tackle the gunman; he wished to remain anonymous.
- Mark Moogalian, a 51-year-old American-born Frenchman with dual nationality who teaches English at the Sorbonne. The second passenger to intervene, he momentarily wrestled the rifle away from the gunman. He sustained a critical gunshot injury to the neck that required emergency surgery at Lille that saved his life.
- Chris Norman, a 62-year-old British businessman living in France. He helped subdue the gunman.
- Anthony Sadler, a 23-year-old American student in his senior year at California State University, Sacramento, and a high school classmate of Stone and Skarlatos, whom he helped tackle the gunman.
- Alek Skarlatos, a 22-year-old American Oregon Army National Guard specialist, on leave after deployment in Afghanistan, former neighbor and classmate of Stone; he struck El Khazzani with the jammed assault rifle. Skarlatos was later elected to the Oregon House of Representatives.
- Spencer Stone, A 23-year-old American Airman First Class in the United States Air Force, who was on leave from the 65th Air Base Group, seized the assailant and held him in a chokehold. In the process, he sustained several cuts, a fractured finger, and an injury to his right eye, which were treated at a hospital near Lille and later at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
- An off-duty French train driver who also helped subdue the gunman; his name has not been released.
Norman, Sadler, Skarlatos, and Stone were made Knights of the Legion of Honour (chevaliers de la Légion d'honneur) on 24 August by French president François Hollande. Moogalian was also made a Knight of the Legion of Honour on 13 September 2015, with Damien A. expected to be similarly honored at a later date; he reportedly received it in the post while preserving his anonymity. Norman, Sadler, and Skarlatos were also awarded the medal of the city of Arras.
In the United States, Sadler was also awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Valor. Skarlatos was awarded the Soldier's Medal, the highest medal awarded to Army personnel for actions outside of combat, while Stone was awarded the Airman's Medal and the Purple Heart and meritoriously promoted two grades on 1 November to Staff Sergeant. Stone and Sadler also received the Civic Medal 1st class from the Prime Minister of Belgium.
Sadler, Skarlatos, and Stone were naturalized as French citizens in an honorary ceremony at the Alliance française in Sacramento, California, on 31 January 2019.