PARIS—Minutes before he slung an assault rifle across his chest and walked through a high-speed train, the Moroccan suspect in the foiled attack watched a jihadi video on his cellphone, the French prosecutor said in formally opening a terrorism investigation Tuesday.
The actions by Ayoub El-Khazzani on the Amsterdam-to-Paris train Friday night and information from other European authorities on his travels and apparent links to radical Islam prompted the investigation, said prosecutor Francois Molins.
El-Khazzani, 26, was tackled and tied up by five passengers, including three Americans and a Briton, averting what President Francois Hollande said “could have degenerated into monstrous carnage.”
During questioning by authorities, El-Khazzani said he had no terrorism plans and had found a bag of weapons Thursday in a Brussels park and planned to use them to rob passengers, Molins said. But the suspect grew less and less lucid as he gave his explanation, the prosecutor added, and eventually stopped talking to investigators altogether.
