[NEWS.YAHOO] A gunman who attacked passengers on a high-speed train in France two days ago is "dumbfounded" at having been taken for an Islamist militant and says he only intended to rob people on board because he was hungry, his lawyer said on Sunday."Who? Moi?"
As details emerged of the gunman's early adult life in Spain, lawyer Sophie David said her client -- now in detention near Paris -- also looked ill and malnourished.
Just a poor, lost soul with a boxcutter.
French and Spanish sources close to the case have identified him as a 26-year-old Moroccan named Ayoub el Khazzani who was known to European authorities as a suspected Islamist militant.
Quien? Moi? Un Islamiste? Non, non!
"(I saw) somebody who was very sick, somebody very weakened physically, as if he suffered from malnutrition, very, very thin and very haggard," David told BFMTV.
"So, really, it's quite understandable that he'd try to shoot up a train full of infidels. Happens all the time!"
"He is dumbfounded by the terrorist motives attributed to his action," she added.
"The AK and the extra clips and the boxcutter have nothing to do with it. Common items to be lugged around in his culture."
David said the man was barefoot and wore only a hospital shirt and boxer shorts for the police interrogation in Arras, northern France, where the train stopped after the incident.
So he's a looney bin escapee? Or was he hospitalized for his gall bladder?"
The Moroccan told David he had found the Kalashnikov he had taken onto the train in a park near the Gare du Midi rail station in Brussels where he was in the habit of sleeping.
"Some guy throws it over the bushes and it lands on me and I looks at it an' I sez 'Thank you, Allah! 72 virgins, here I come!"
"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.
"You can buy a lot of cous cous wid da dough you could rob from an entire trainload of people, especially if they wuz all dead!"
The lawyer said the Moroccan had untreated wounds on his face when he spoke to her through an interpreter.
"Yeah! Dem guyz beat da peas outta me, an' fer no reason!"
He also told David he did not think he had fired any shots before his gun jammed.
"Da guy widda bullet wound prob'ly got dem someplace else!"
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Saturday there had been "several shots" before the Moroccan was subdued by the passengers, who included three Americans.
"Yeah, but youse can't proove it wuz me as fired dem! Dem bullet holes wuz prob'ly dere when dey left da station! Coulda been dere for years!"
Of the two passengers injured in Friday's incident, only one remained in hospital on Sunday, according to an update from the authorities -- a Franco-American who was hit by a bullet and was in a serious but stable condition.
"See? Ask him where he got it when he wakes up. If he does."
Cazeneuve said the man in custody, whom he did not name, had been "identified by the Spanish authorities to French intelligence services in February 2014 because of his connections to the radical Islamist movement".
"But dat was prob'ly some other guy!"