• Album France pays tribute to the heroes of the Thalys train

The French Justice sentenced this Thursday to life imprisonment the Moroccan terrorist

Ayoub El Khazzani

, who on August 21, 2015 attacked a Thalys high-speed train destined for Paris with the intention of perpetrating a massacre, which was prevented by four passengers.

The Paris Criminal Court also sentenced three accomplices to that attack to terms of seven, 25 and 27 years in prison, the process of which began on November 16.

The 31-year-old Khazzani got on this Thalys, who had left Amsterdam, in Brussels with a bag in which he carried

a Kalashnikov assault rifle

, a pistol and a knife with which, according to the accusation, he intended to commit a massacre among travelers that he was unable to perpetrate.

When he mounted the weapons in a bathroom, shortly after crossing the French border, several passengers heard him and jumped on him until he was reduced: two young American servicemen, Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone, a friend of these, the student Anthony Sadler, who he was on vacation in Europe, and a Brit of a certain age.

The first traveler to face him was the French-American Mark Moogalian, whom he passed when leaving the bathroom and who was shot in the back.

"I am sorry from the bottom of my heart," said El Khazzani on Thursday in a last turn to speak in which, according to the French media, he

apologized

to those affected by his act.

His attack, which the American filmmaker Clint Eastwood recounted in his film "The 15:17 to Paris", was directed by Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the mastermind of a series of attacks in Paris (2015) and Brussels (2016) in which more died 160 people.

"I was kind of hypnotized"

El Khazzani acknowledged in his statement on November 25 that he was influenced by Abaaoud and confessed that he decided to take action after having seen

videos of bombings by Western forces in Syria in which the civilian population died

.

"I was hypnotized," he said that day before the court, which he tried to convince that he did not intend to commit an indiscriminate massacre, but to attack the US military and workers of the European Commission (EC).

Throughout the process, the soldiers who stopped him also appeared.

"I don't feel like a hero because we just did what we had to do to survive," said Alek Skarlatos, who was a member of the Army National Guard at the time.

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