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)

published 24 August 2015

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.

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.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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