Three Americans and a British citizen gave the world “a lesson in courage” by taking down a suspected terrorist, French President Francois Hollande said Monday in presenting the men with the Legion of Honor.
The men received France’s highest decoration days after they subdued an armed lunatic aboard an Amsterdam-to-Paris train.
“[They showed] that faced with terror, we have the power to resist,” Hollande said at the Paris ceremony. “You also gave a lesson in courage, in will, and thus in hope.”
Hollande pinned the Legion of Honor on US Airman Spencer Stone, National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos, their longtime pal Anthony Sadler and British businessman Chris Norman.
“Faced with the evil called terrorism, there is a good, that’s humanity,” Hollande told the four men. “You are the incarnation of that.”
Hollande said Stone and Skarlatos might be servicemen in their day-to-day lives, “but on Friday you were simply passengers. You behaved as soldiers but also as responsible men.”
Norman, speaking in French, echoed that theme and said everyone has the responsibility to act when confronted with terror.
“I hope this doesn’t happen to you, but I ask you to really think: `OK, what will I do if this happens?’ ” Norman said.
“`Am I going to simply stand still or am I going to try to be active if the situation presents itself?’ ”
The accused jihadist, 26-year-old Ayoub El-Khazzani, was armed to the teeth when he was confronted by the heroic passengers.
The three Americans happened to be in the right car at the right time thanks to bad a WiFi signal.
Saddler revealed on Sunday that his and his two pals had moved to the seats where they confronted El-Khazzani, from another location just 30 minutes earlier.
“We decided to get up [and move] because the WiFi wasn’t so good in that car” where they had originally sat, he said.
That byte of technological luck saved an untold number of lives.
The French president said their courage got the attention of the world.
“Since Friday, the entire world admires your courage, your sangfroid, your spirit of solidarity,” Hollande told the men.
“This is what allowed you to with bare hands — your bare hands — subdue an armed man. This must be an example for all, and a source of inspiration.”
The suspect’s dad, Mohammed El-Khazzani, said he hasn’t spoken to the accused jihadist since 2014 when he left the Spanish town of Algeciras to work for a mobile phone company in France.
That gig ended when he was fired one month into a six-month contract.
The suspect has been to Syria and was on terror watch lists in three nations before Friday’s train attack.
“They are saying Ayoub is a terrorist but I simply can’t believe it,” the dad told Spanish newspaper El Mundo. “Why would he want to kill anyone? It makes no sense.”
Another passenger who interceded French-American college professor Mark Moogalian, was still in a hospital on Monday recovering from a gunshot wound on Friday.
He confronted El-Khazzani before the three Americans and temporarily wrestled away the suspect’s AK-47, witnesses said.
But the alleged terrorist took out a sidearm, shot Moogalian in the neck and retook his AK-47.
“He looked at me and said ‘I’m hit, I’m hit.’ He thought it was over and he was going to die,” wife Isabella Risacher-Moogalian told Europe-1 radio on Monday.
The academic is expected to survive. He too “is among the heroes in this story,” his wife said.
With Post Wire Services