Lawyer: Suspect in French train shooting says he's not a terrorist, just wanted to rob people

The suspect in the shooting after being subdued by passengers.
(Image credit: Twitter.com/CNNSitRoom)

A lawyer for the man accused of attacking passengers on a train in France on Friday said her client is "dumbfounded" over being called a terrorist and claims he planned on just robbing people so he could buy food.

See more

Sophie David said the alleged gunman — who has been identified by Reuters as Ayoub el Khazzani, per French and Spanish sources — looked "very sick," "very weakened physically," and "very thin and haggard." David told BFMTV her client had been sleeping near a train station in Brussels, and found a Kalashnikov. He decided to get on the train because "some other homeless people told him [it] would be full of wealthy people traveling from Amsterdam to Paris and he hoped to feed himself by armed robbery."

David said that her client told her he did not believe he fired any shots before his gun jammed, but French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said there had been "several shots" before he was subdued by passengers. Two people were injured during the incident, and one remains in the hospital in serious but stable condition. The sources told Reuters Khazzani is a 26-year-old Moroccan known to European authorities as a suspected Islamist militant, with Spanish security sources saying he traveled to Syria in 2014.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Continue reading for free

We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.

Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.

Catherine Garcia

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.