French prosecutors call for life in prison for 2015 intercity train attacker

Prostecuting lawyers have called for life imprisonment for Ayoub El Khazzani, the gunman that passengers managed overwhelm on a train between Amsterdam and Paris in August 2015, thus avoiding a massacre.

Eight to 30 years in prison were also demanded for the three defendants on trial alongside El Khazzani before a special court in Paris, suspected of having helped him and Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who coordinated the attack and the attacks of 13 November 2015, to reach Belgium from Syria.

At the opening of the trial on Tuesday, the prosecuting lawyers began by paying tribute to the passengers, describing them as "accidental heroes" who overpowered the shooter.

On August 21, 2015, Ayoub El Khazzani, who 25 at the time, boarded the Thalys Amsterdam-Paris train station in Brussels, armed with a Kalashnikov, a pistol and a Stanley knife and 300 rounds of ammunition.

He was subsequently overpowered by passengers, including two American soldiers on holiday and in civilian clothes, who jumped on him.

According to the attorney general in court, "what is striking is Ayoub El Khazzani's determination. At no time has he given up." He allegedly struggled furiously when passengers tried to stop him and "until the end, he would have tried to kill," recalling that Ayoub El Khazzani has refused to reconise his guilt and has locked himself in a "fanciful version" since the start of the trial.

El Khazzani has argued that he was only ordered to kill the American soldiers on board, a mission that he said he ultimately would not have been able to accomplish.

This trial continues.