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France Treating Thwarted Train Attack as a Terrorist Case
French train attack suspect Ayoub El-Khazzani. (CNN)
Despite the suspect’s initial claims that he had been hungry and acting purely out of self-interest when he held up a Paris-bound train last Friday, the French government is now officially investigating the foiled attempt by 26-year-old Moroccan gunman Ayoub El-Khazzani as a terrorist act.
As The New York Times reported Tuesday, El-Khazzani’s consumption of streaming media just prior to the attack—which a trio of Americans, along with British and French citizens, prevented—represents a major reason informing French officials’ strategy:
French authorities formally opened a terrorism investigation on Tuesday after a thwarted attack on a high-speed train last week, saying the suspected gunman had watched a jihadi video onboard minutes before the violence.
The decision to open an investigation was based on the actions by 26-year-old Moroccan suspect Ayoub El-Khazzani on the train Friday night and information from other European authorities about his travels and apparent links to radical Islam, prosecutor Francois Molins said.
Molins said El-Khazzani notably watched the online video on his phone minutes before he walked through the Amsterdam-to-Paris train carrying an assault rifle and other weapons. Authorities say that they found the suspect’s phone in a bag left in the train.
The paper added that investigators would likely be filing preliminary charges agains El-Khazzani soon.
—Posted by Kasia Anderson
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Source: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/france_treating_thwarted_train_attack_as_a_terrorist_case_20150825/
