Just the extra benefits of having wide open borders.

There will be more of this in the future.. a lot more.

]Yesterday they were wrongly identified as Marines by media. Spencer Stone is a U.S. Airman, Alek Skarlatos was in the Oregon National Guard, just back from Afghanistan, and Anthony Sadler was a student friend traveling with them.

The bloody and chaotic scene on the train seems to have played out pretty much as CNN describes it above, with Stone and Skarlatos initially charging the gunman. In the ensuing battle, Stone was slashed across the back of the neck and nearly had his thumb cut off. He was taken to a French medical center specializing in the treatment of hand injuries and is expected to recover. And it’s a good thing that the Americans stepped in because the early reports indicate that the staff on the train turned and fled like sheep when the trouble started, barricading themselves in their staff room and leaving the passengers to fend for themselves. Yay, France.

Profile Emerges of Suspect in Attack on Train to Paris



LONDON — The young man who emerged from a Thalys train bathroom on Friday with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, pistol and box cutter is believed to be Ayoub El Kahzani, 26, of Moroccan origin, who was known to the Spanish and French security services and is reported to have traveled to Syria last year.

With the man under interrogation by French antiterrorism authorities, who can hold him without charge for up to 96 hours, French officials cautioned that many details of his life, and even his identity, had yet to be confirmed.

But if the outlines of his profile prove correct, in particular that he had already been identified by officials as a potential threat, the case may once again underscore the challenges European authorities face as they try to keep track of several thousand people in Europe who have circulated to and from Iraq and Syria to join jihadist groups.

[snip]

The suspect in the train attack, like Mohammed Merah, who shot French Army personnel and Jews in Toulouse in 2012, or the Kouachi brothers who were instrumental in the Charlie Hebdo killings, were all on watch lists kept by French security services, which Mr. Heisbourg called “a recurring pattern that is very disturbing.” The good news is that the security services were following the right people, he said, but “the bad news is that this knowledge served little purpose.”

He had been deemed a terrorist threat following the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris - and had apparently fought with ISIS in Syria earlier this year.

Off-duty US airman Spencer Stone said he had just woken from a deep sleep when he saw the gunman and moved to restrain him on Friday.

He overpowered the gunman with Alek Skarlatos, a member of the US National Guard, US student Anthony Sadler and Briton Chris Norman.

They are to receive the Legion d'Honneur from the French president.



The French are enthralled by the three Americans who acted so swiftly to stop the Thalys gunman. In their news conference Sunday afternoon at the US embassy in Paris, they came over as archetypes of American masculine virtue: handsome, strong, modest.

Deep in the French gene, there is something that responds positively to this. It is the same spirit that is so grateful - 70 years on - for the American sacrifice in the Normandy landings: a recognition of the American capacity to join moral clarity with swift, decisive action.

Recognition, but also not a little envy. The press has made much of the fact that while the three Americans - and their ally the British businessman Chris Norman - have been feted with news conferences and all the rigmarole of instant fame, the Frenchman who also played a heroic part has preferred to remain anonymous.

A bit much, maybe but nice to see they are getting some recognition.

I think it's quite appropriate. There's nothing wrong with being recognised for doing something brave in the heat of the moment. The same medal was given to a Canadian back in 2005 when some neo-Nazi tried to take a shot at Jacques Chirac.