It was just your ordinary robbery attempt, you see, with a Kalashnikov.
It is a recurring and increasingly ridiculous feature of jihad terror coverage: every time a Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar” plants a bomb or opens fire on a crowd of infidels, mainstream media coverage notes that “the attacker’s motive is not known.” But now Ayoub el-Khazzani, the Muslim gunman who was overpowered by three Americans, including two Marines, on a Paris-bound train last Friday, has gone the media one better by professing to be “dumbfounded” at being accused of terrorism. But the media, not unexpectedly, is happily going along, spreading the fog of disinformation that envelops the West’s response to the jihad threat even more thickly.
El-Khazzani is “dumbfounded” that he is being accused of being a terrorist? Any sane person should be dumbfounded that he is dumbfounded. A bearded, caftan-wearing Muslim carries a Kalashnikov, an automatic pistol, ammunition and a box cutter onto a crowded train in a country where the Islamic State has repeatedly called for lone wolf jihad attacks, opened fire with the Kalashnikov, and he is “dumbfounded” that anyone thinks he is a terrorist? How stupid does he think Western authorities are?
Very stupid, apparently. His lawyer, Sophie David, said that el-Khazzani was shocked “to the point of being amused” by the idea that anyone thought him a terrorist. “He does not understand why this story has taken on such importance. He says he just wanted to extort money from Thalys passengers, nothing else. He denies that there was any terrorist dimension to his plot. That almost made him laugh.”
Yeah, that’s very funny, but according to this farfetched scenario, there’s a tragic edge as well. David claimed that el-Khazzani was “somebody who was very sick, somebody very weakened physically, as if he suffered from malnutrition, very, very thin and very haggard.” Lo and behold, in this weakened state, no doubt brought on by discrimination from The Man, el-Khazzani (the story goes) found the Kalashnikov and the pistol in a park in Brussels.
Who leaves a Kalashnikov and an automatic pistol unattended in a park, where, wonder of wonders, they can be found by a young man driven by “Islamophobic” discrimination to just enough hunger and desperation to use them? Never mind – according to the story, the find gave el-Khazzani a plan. “A few days later,” said David, “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.”
Here’s the reality. The Express reported that “a Spanish anti-terrorist official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, revealed El Khazzani had lived in Spain until last year, moved to France then traveled to Syria where he is believed to have trained with ISIS before returning to France.”
And a neighbor recalled: “He and his brother were very devout; they dressed like Afghans and all that, but I can’t believe this. He would sit with us while we smoked joints, you know? He didn’t smoke, but he didn’t mind that we did.” It also turns out that el-Khazzani and his brothers were “regulars” at a local mosque.
So now we have a devout, mosque-attending Muslim who “dressed like an Afghan” and trained in the Islamic State boarding a train armed to the teeth, and opening fire on random non-Muslim passengers, and he is “dumbfounded” to be accused of terrorism?
War is deceit, said Muhammad, and it looks as if Ayoub El Khazzani has taken those words to heart. What is amazing is that anyone would believe this nonsense, but of course the mainstream media is eating it up. More fool the French authorities and the media in the West if they believe him.