“I don't consider myself a hero because I was fighting for my own survival (…). I think Mark [Moogalian] is the hero because without him we couldn't have done what we did ”
.
Thursday, it was by videoconference that Spencer Stone, an American citizen naturalized French at his request, testified in the trial of the Thalys attack on August 21, 2015. Malaise and hospitalization had prevented him from speaking at Paris with his two friends, Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sandler.
One thinks for a moment that, in any case, if the weakened man had wanted to stand at the bar in a wheelchair, he might have found it difficult to enter a room inaccessible to the disabled public, a shame for a courtyard. anti-terrorism assizes!
Read also: Thalys attack: the hero's "luck"
"Spencer", short hair, white shirt and blue striped tie, was anxious in any case to tell about his violent face-to-face with the accused, Ayoub El Khazzani.
To taste his story, delivered from the premises of a Californian district attorney, one must refrain from the sneers of fashionable cynicism or the disillusioned sigh of regulars at the assizes.
And admit that the two episodes that Spencer Stone narrates, with his chubby and impassive face, simply traversed by a slight tremor when one seems to question his word, are simply unheard of.
And having heard, read and reread them before and even maybe seen them in a Hollywood movie doesn't change the case.
"We have to move or it will be too late"
First episode therefore, that of the neutralization of the terrorist El Khazzani, boarded the Thalys Amsterdam-Paris with a Kalashnikov, 270 cartridges, a pistol and a cutter.
For a mass killing according to the prosecution, to kill three American soldiers and officials of the European Commission support the defense.
On board the train on August 21, 2015, US Air Force rescuer Spencer Stone dozed off with his earphones in his ears.
“After 30 to 40 minutes, I was woken up by a train attendant running past me, it caught my attention, I found it weird.
I then took off my headphones and heard the sound of breaking glass and screams.
I turned around and saw Ayoub El Khazzani picking up an AK47 from the ground, cocking it and loading it.
I realized he hadn't started shooting.
I said to myself: we have to move or it will be too late.
Alek [Skarlatos] patted me on the shoulder and said, go ahead.
Right after I got up and ran towards Ayoub.
He pointed the AK at me and I thought I heard him pull the trigger several times.
From the sound I heard he was trying to use the gun on me.
When I got on him, I was surprised the blow didn't go ”
.
A fight follows where El Khazzani defends himself fiercely, hitting Stone with his rifle in the face (his left eye is hit) then pointing his pistol at his head.
The Franco-American notes:
"I think I heard him pull the trigger
[the pistol had lost its magazine in the tumult],
so it was the second time he tried to kill me"
.
The terrorist then grabs his cutter, almost cuts off his opponent's left thumb, aims his arm, cuts his neck.
Stone is convinced that El Khazzani was trying to
"cut his throat".
"Mr. Khazzani tried to kill you three times?"
asks the President of the Court at this point in the story.
"Yes"
he replies.
To read also: Terrorism: the courage of the “five of the Thalys”
The US Air Force rescuer finally gets the upper hand with the help of his friends and other passengers.
And that's where his second story begins, perhaps the most incredible, in any case the most beautiful.
Let's take a break from this madness that lasted a moment: Spencer Stone is injured in his hand, his left eye affected, his neck cut with a cutter, he comes out of a fight with a man whom the witnesses describe in fury and a superhuman strength and which he is convinced he tried to kill him three times.
What does the rescuer then working in a military clinic, in pediatrics?
He is going to rescue Mark Moogalian whom El Khazzani shot when the fifty-something had managed to steal his Kalashnikov from him.
The man hit in the back lies in his blood.
“Mark was still conscious, I took off my shirt to put pressure on the wound.
I realized that an artery was affected.
The only way was to put your fingers in the wound.
I felt the pulse of the artery inside his neck, I pressed and the bleeding stopped ”
.
In response to his lawyer, Me Thibault de Montbrial, the witness noted:
"I think Mark would have died very quickly"
without this intervention.
"He was there to hurt"
For a long half hour, until arriving at Amiens station, Stone and Isabelle Moogalian manage to keep Mark conscious.
Commenting on his actions, Spencer Stone calmly explains to the court:
“My motivation was to survive.
[Ayoub El Khazzani's]
intentions
seemed clear.
He was there to do harm ”
.
Without a miraculous shooting incident (cartridge hit but not fired), an incident established by the investigation and confirmed in the courtroom by Alek Skarlatos, Spencer Stone would have died and Ayoub El Khazzani would indeed have been able to
"do harm"
.
Read also: Behind the Thalys attack, the shadow of the brain of November 13
The importance of the role played by the Franco-American has also been paradoxically underlined through… the defense of El Khazzani.
A few minutes before the videoconference, Me Sarah Mauger-Poliak, counsel for the accused, had questioned a police witness.
With the obvious intention of blurring the image of her client's “soldier of the caliphate”, she asked him in particular whether it was common for terrorists to be equipped with faulty weapons.
Positive response from the policeman recalling that the Bataclan terrorists had complained about a deficient Kalashnikov before finally managing to make it work.
"Did this Kalashnikov kill well?"
then asks Me Mauger-Poliak, the policeman confirming it.
Reported on the Thalys attack and retaining the thesis of the shooting incident, the anecdote immediately calls for reflection: if Spencer Stone had not tackled El Khazzani temporarily "paralyzed" by this shooting incident, if the terrorist had had time, as the Bataclan killers had, to fix the problem, what would have happened?