The trial of a suspected Islamist terrorist accused in the 2015 foiled attack of a high-speed train in France opened on Monday in Paris, reports FRANCE 24.
Ayoub El Khazzani boarded the Amsterdam-Paris Thalys train on August 21st 2015, and launched his would-be attack moments after the train crossed the Belgian border into France.
The Moroccan national was heavily armed when he emerged from a lavatory on the train and opened fire inside a carriage, but the gunman was overpowered by passengers, a French national and three Americans on holiday. Some 150 passengers were onboard the carriage. All escaped alive.
Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood depicted the events on the train in a 2018 film, "The 15:17 to Paris". The movie featured the three American heroes – off-duty US servicemen Spencer Stone and Alek Skarlatos, and their friend Anthony Sadler – reprising their own roles in the aborted attack.
"I just remember being lucky that I was alive," Skarlatos told FRANCE 24 in 2016. "We could have died so easily if it wasn't for a lot of luck and just having the right reaction," he said, crediting the fact that the friends had known each other "since we were five years old" in their split-second decision to "charge the dude" together. The three men have since been naturalised as French citizens at their request. Skarlatos referenced the Thalys experience on the campaign trail in his ultimately unsuccessful 2020 Republican bid for Congress in Western Oregon.
Director Eastwood has been called as a witness "because his film involved accurate, the court believes, reenactments of what exactly took place that day," FRANCE 24's Catherine Norris-Trent reported from the courthouse on Monday morning. Owing in part to the coronavirus pandemic, the 90-year-old American filmmaker is expected to give evidence by video link with the Paris court early next week.
Stone, Skarlatos and Sadler are, for their part, due to appear in person. "The three men are travelling to Paris and we're told will be giving evidence before the court at the end of this week," Norris-Trent reported. "They've said they feel it's important to tell their story and they also want to look the would-be attacker in the eye and hear answers directly from him," she said.
Among other charges, Khazzani is accused of attempted murder with the intent to commit terrorism, and association with terrorist networks. He allegedly joined the Islamic State group in Syria in May 2015. If convicted, the 31-year-old faces life in prison.
The main suspect will be joined in the dock at the special anti-terror court in Paris by three other men accused of helping him in the foiled attack.