SUSPECT IDENTIFIED French official says gunman linked to militants

United States Air Force serviceman Spencer Stone, National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos and their friend Anthony Sadler, spoke to the press on Sunday at the US embassy in Paris.

A Kalashnikov assault weapon with nine magazines of ammunition, a Luger automatic pistol with extra ammo and a box cutter were carried by the man who attempted to attack a packed high-speed passenger train, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Saturday.

Spanish authorities notified French intelligence of Kahzani in February 2014 because of his alleged ties to the radical Islamist movement, but French officials said he was not under surveillance in France.

Stone and Skarlatos, who had returned from a deployment in Afghanistan in July, grabbed the man while Sadler and Norman also helped restrain him.

Stone, who had a black eye and had is left arm in a sling after undergoing surgery to reattach his thumb that the attacker slashed off with his box cutter, said that once the gunman was hogtied on the floor, he went to help another passenger and used his fingers to stop bleeding in another passenger’s neck. Both were hospitalised but are said to be recovering well, and Stone was released later Saturday after surgery on his hand. The attacker, reported to be a 26-year-old Moroccan national, is being questioned by French anti-terrorism police.

France says the man who attacked Friday a train between Amsterdam and Paris appears to have been under investigation in Spain for links to militant Islam.

Mr Cazeneuve said on Saturday that the identity of the suspect had not been “established with certainty”, but official sources later said he had been identified through fingerprints.

Skarlatos said military training played a part in subduing the gunman. He said his first instinct was to duck for cover when the gunman began shouting at the train passengers.

“Please do something”, he said.

U.S. Ambassador Jane Hartley, who introduced the three, said: “They are truly heroes”. That’s when Skarlatos and Sadler, along with a British man named Chris Norman, held him down until authorities could arrest him.

“A few days later he decided to get on a train that some other homeless people told him would be full of wealthy people traveling from Amsterdam to Paris and he hoped to feed himself by armed robbery”, David said, according to Reuters.

Norman said he heard “glass breaking and then saw somebody running down the aisle to the front of the train”. The attacker, Sadler explained, was “skinny” and “basically came in and we saw him cocking the AK 47 [the Kalashnikov]”.

Despite his own injuries, Stone then went to help man who had been shot in the shoulder.

“We often use the word hero and in this case I know that word has never been more appropriate”, Ms Hartley said. “Spencer just ran anyway and if anyone had gotten shot, it would have been Spencer and we’re just very lucky that nobody got killed”, he added in quotes shown on the BBC.

He says he doesn’t feel like a hero and added that if it wasn’t for Spencer, they would all be dead.