Rather vague remarks from the main suspect -
Virginia Mayo / AP / SIPA
He had boarded the train armed with a Kalashnikov and nearly 300 ammunition: on the first day of his trial before the special assize court in Paris, the Thalys gunman, neutralized by passengers, admitted that he intended to commit an attack mass, before retracting and maintaining that it only targeted the American soldiers who overpowered it.
"Do you recognize all the facts?
», Asks the president at the beginning of the afternoon.
“Yes, the whole thing,” answers Ayoub El Khazzani, a 31-year-old Moroccan, blue denim shirt open over a white T-shirt, black hair tied in a small bun.
Two hours later, he changes his mind.
“It wasn't for massacres, it was for American soldiers,” he said, causing the president's exasperation.
"I asked you the question three times", underlines the magistrate, asking again El Khazzani, who insists on speaking in French - hesitant - not to deprive himself of the interpreter so that his explanations are "more fluid. ".
Jihadist song and camera
During the morning, the president had returned at length to the day of August 21, 2015 and the preparation of this attack, led by the coordinator of the attacks of November 13, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, with whom El Khazzani had arrived in Europe from Turkey.
On board the Thalys Amsterdam-Paris, El Khazzani came out of the toilet, shirtless, Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder, after listening to a jihadist song on his phone and checking that his camera was working, to broadcast a video of the attack as he had. asked Abaaoud, reminds the president.
"I'm sorry for the victims"
He had fired a pistol at a passenger who had torn off his Kalashnikov, seriously injuring him, before being overpowered by others, including two American soldiers on vacation.
Investigators, he explained that his designated targets were Americans only, assuring that he knew they were military despite their attire as vacationers.
"I am sorry for the victims", "I am haunted" said El Khazzani.
Asked during the afternoon about his career before the attack, he recounted his childhood among siblings of six in Morocco, where his father ran an athletics club, before emigrating to Spain.
El Khazzani, 18, begins to use cocaine and sell drugs in Madrid;
he was arrested several times.
He then discovered religion through his big brother, who would be expelled from Spain "for virulent anti-West remarks", underlines the president.
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