Ayoub el-Khazzani (born 3 September 1989) was a member of the Islamic State who was the perpetrator of the 2015 Thalys attack.
Biography[]
Ayoub el-Khazzani was born on 3 September 1989 in Tetouan, Morocco to a family of Sunni Muslims. In 2007 he moved to Spain two years after his father and lived in Madrid and Algeciras, and he was involved with drug trafficking as well as attending radical mosques and giving speeches defending jihad. In 2014 he moved to Aubervilliers, Seine-Saint-Denis, France, where he worked at Lycamobile for two months. From May to July 2014, he fought in the Syrian Civil War with the Islamic State before returning to France. He was in contact with Abdelhamid Abaaoud, and on 21 August 2015 he wounded 3 people with a Luger pistol and an AKM assault rifle on board a high-speed Thalys train in northern France. el-Khazzani was subdued by Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, and Alek Skarlatos, Stone and Skarlatos being US Military members, after his assault rifle jammed. He claimed that the attack was actually a robbery motivated by hunger, but the modus operandi resembled a terrorist attack. On 20 August 2016,Khazzani was captured and arrested for terrorism.