Americans Who Took Out Gunman on French Train Receive Country's Highest Honor in Paris

French President François Hollande has awarded the Legion of Honor — the highest decoration in France — to three Americans and one Briton who helped stop a Kalashnikov-wielding gunman on a high-speed passenger train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris Friday.

Heavily armed Ayoub al-Khazzani was tackled by the men — who have been dubbed "the train heroes" by French media — after his gun jammed. The four men helped disarm the gunman and beat him until he was unconscious, before tying him up.

The three Americans — US Airman Spencer Stone, 23, Oregon National Guard reservist Alek Skarlatos, 22, and their friend Anthony Sadler — in addition to British IT consultant Chris Norman, were awarded the medal during a ceremony at the Elysée Palace, in Paris.

"Your heroism must be an example for many," Hollande said during the ceremony, adding that the suspect had "enough weapons and ammunition to carry out a real carnage."

The president also "saluted" the bravery of a French passenger who wishes to remain anonymous, and who made the first attempt to tackle the gunman. Two other French passengers — both employees of French National Railway Company SNCF — will also be awarded the Legion of Honor.

The anti-terrorism prosecutor's office in Paris was tasked Friday with investigating the attack. Khazzani remains in custody in Levallois-Perret, near Paris, where he is being questioned by officers from the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) — France's domestic intelligence agency. The gunman could remain in custody until Tuesday evening.

Khazzani — who is 25 and was born in Morocco — has denied that he was planning to stage a terrorist attack. According to his lawyer, Khazzani stumbled upon the Kalashnikov in a park in Brussels where he often slept. The gunman claimed he was simply planning to commit a robbery on the train.

Khazzani is currently on four countries' watch lists — France, Belgium, Germany and Spain — because of his links to radical Islam.

Originally from the northern Moroccan city of Tetouan, Khazzani moved to Spain with his family at the age of 18, before relocating to the southern Spanish port city of Algeciras in 2010. There, he started to frequent a radical mosque and became known to the Spanish intelligence services. Between 2009 and 2013, El-Khazzani was arrested at least three times for drug trafficking offenses.

According to French daily Le Monde, Khazzani's employer in Spain — British mobile network operator Lyca Mobile — offered him a six-month contract in the Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis in 2014. Following his move to France in February 2014, Spanish authorities alerted French intelligence services to Khazzani's radical links, and he was placed on France's state security "S" list — a listing that doesn't automatically mean the suspect is placed under surveillance. Khazzani was listed as "S3" — with 16 being the least dangerous and 1, the most dangerous.

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Khazzani was soon fired by the company, and according to Spanish daily El País, reportedly traveled to Syria — a trip the gunman has denied. Upon returning from Syria at the start of 2015, he is believed to have settled in Belgium. On May 10, 2015, Khazzani was sighted in Berlin, where intelligence services identified him boarding a flight to Istanbul.

He resurfaced Friday, when he boarded the high-speed Thalys train in Brussels.

Friday's foiled terror plot has raised new concerns about the vulnerability of Europe's rail networks to terror attacks. Bertrand Monnet, head of research at France's EDHEC Business School and an expert in criminal risk management, told VICE news Monday that France was "fourteen years behind when it comes to rail safety."

According to Monnet, French train operator SNCF and France's government need to catch up with the aviation sector, which has "spent a lot of time and money on securing airports and training staff since September 11, 2001."

"Do the trains run on a different planet?" he mused, noting that since 9/11, little to nothing had been done to improve rail passenger safety. Reforming the outdated, current security system, he added, would be a "real Mount Everest of security." The head of SNCF Guillaume Pepy warned Sunday that the idea of rolling out the current airport security system to railway stations was not realistic. Instead, Pepy said that France's state-owned rail company would introduce an emergency hotline and campaigns for greater vigilance inside its stations.

According to Monnet, the current level of threat calls for a "dual [security] system," articulated around video surveillance and rapid intervention teams on the ground. "There won't be a [security] gate at the entrance of each train, that's technically impossible," he said.

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"In the coming days, the authorities will probably station plain-clothes police officers on board trains and carry out more targeted checks," said Monnet, who added that these enhanced measures had not yet been announced.

But according to the expert, France's security forces are already stretched thin patrolling the country as part of Operation Sentinelle — a nationwide security operation, which was triggered in January following the Charlie Hebdo attack.

In a statement published one day after the attack, the Alliance Police Nationale (APN) French police union called for free transport on all public transport for "on or off-duty police officers." The APN also urged the government to relax restrictions on the carrying of service weapons, "to ensure sound intervention conditions for police officers, whatever the circumstance."

Follow Pierre-Louis Caron and Pierre Longeray on Twitter : @pierrelouis_c and @PLongeray

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