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ATTACK

Teens’ savage attack ‘may have been filmed’

Video footage may be available of the brutal beating in Gothenburg where a gang of teenage boys are suspected of having beaten a 61-year-old into a coma as bystanders looked on.

Published: 3 April 2012 10:20 CEST
Teens' savage attack 'may have been filmed'

On Sunday, four of the seven teens believed to have viciously attacked a 61-year-old man two weeks ago in Gothenburg were ordered held on remand, while the victim is still fighting for his life in hospital.

The boys, who are aged between 15 and 16, were ordered held on suspicion of aggravated assault in the beating of 61-year-old Carl-Eric Cedvander, who was left unconscious in a fountain in a town square.

Another three younger boys who were involved have been taken into custody by social services due to their age, but remain suspected of having a role in the attack.

On Tuesday, the Aftonbladet newspaper reported that video surveillance cameras may have captured the event, with the tapes having been collected by police in hopes they will provide them with a better understanding what happened in the beating, which has has left Cedvander hovering between life and death in a coma ever since.

The attack, which occurred in Kortedala Torg on March 18th, has left other residents embittered and calling for action, and police are concerned that talks of a demonstration against violence may boil over into an anti-immigrant protest.

“We see that racist websites blame foreigners in general after what happened. It makes me angry, and we need to monitor developments carefully,” said the police’s Bertil Claesson to Aftonbladet.

“Protests against violence are good, a sign of health, but we don’t want it to become a protest out of hatred.”

The fountain in the square where the attack took place has been turned into a makeshift memorial for Cedvander, as Gothenburg residents have reacted strongly to the attacks, but also against the onlookers who allegedly did little to help.

While witness reports suggest that the matter was over in a matter of minutes, bystanders did little more than yell at the gang of teens.

The four boys, who all attend Hjällbo high school, denied initial suspicions of attempted murder.

However, one of the teens has admitted to certain aspects of the attack.

“He admits that he used a certain amount of violence, but said the man attacked him first,” the boy’s lawyer, Per Söderberg, told the Göteborgs Tidning (GT) newspaper.

Formal charges are expected to be filed against the boys by April 13th.

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TRAIN

Trial to begin over Paris train attack that inspired movie

A Moroccan man goes on trial in France on Monday accused of an attempted terror attack on an Amsterdam-Paris train five years ago which was foiled by passengers whose heroic actions were turned into a Hollywood film.

Published: 14 November 2020 09:14 CET
Trial to begin over Paris train attack that inspired movie
Off-duty US servicemen Spencer Stone and Alek Skarlatos (left and right) and their friend Anthony Sadler (centre), who helped tackle the attacker. Photo: Thomas Samson/AFP
Director Clint Eastwood, 90, is on the witness list for the trial in Paris, and it is believed his 2018 film “The 15:17 to Paris” will serve as a reconstruction of the events of August 21, 2015.
   
Ayoub El Khazzani was tackled by passengers, including two off-duty American servicemen, shortly after emerging bare-chested and heavily armed from a toilet on a Thalys high-speed train.
   
Some 150 passengers were in the carriage with him.
   
Khazzani had an AK47 slung over his back, a bag of nearly 300 rounds of ammunition, and appeared to be “in a trance”, according to a young Frenchman waiting in the passageway, and the first to try to subdue Khazzani.
   
Another passenger, a Franco-American professor, came to the Frenchman's aid, grabbing Khazzani's assault rifle.
   
The attacker took a pistol out of his belt, shot and wounded the professor and reclaimed the AK47, only to be tackled afresh and disarmed by two American soldiers — Spencer Stone and Alek Skarlatos — who heard the commotion from a neighbouring carriage.
   
The soldiers were aided by their friend Anthony Sadler, with whom they were backpacking through Europe.
 
   
Stone was slashed in the neck and on the eyebrow and almost had his thumb sliced off with a box-cutter wielded by Khazzani.
   
“He had 270 rounds of ammunition on him, enough to kill 300 people,” according to Thibault de Montbrial, the lawyer for the three Americans hoping to attend the trial at a special anti-terror court from Monday.
   
According to the lawyer, there was no doubt his clients had prevented a “mass attack.”
   
Khazzani, who joined the Islamic State group in Syria in May 2015, is charged with “attempted terrorist murder”, and will be joined in the dock by three other men accused of helping him.
   
De Montbrial said the Americans, who played themselves in Eastwood's film, wish to attend the trial because they “want to tell” their story and “look into the eyes of the man they faced”.
   
However, they may not make it to Paris due to coronavirus restrictions.
 
 
'Remain calm'
 
The Thalys assault happened in the same year as the January 2015 massacre of staff at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, the killing of a policewoman, and the deadly hostage siege at the Hyper Cacher market — which left a total of 17 dead.
   
In November the same year, jihadists armed with assault rifles and explosives struck outside the national stadium, Paris cafes and the Bataclan concert hall, killing 130 people and wounding more than 350 in the deadliest peacetime attack in France's history.
   
Belgian Abdelhamid Abaaoud is believed to have been one of the masterminds behind the Thalys and November 13 attacks, as well as others in Europe, including the Brussels bombings of March 2016 that killed 32 civilians.
   
Abaaoud was killed by police in a Paris suburb five days after he shot indiscriminately at packed cafe terraces in Paris on the night of the coordinated November 13 attacks.
   
The Khazzani trial comes at a time of heightened security alert in France following three attacks blamed on jihadists in a month — a knife attack outside Charlie Hebdo's former offices, the beheading of a history teacher, and a deadly stabbing spree at a church in Nice.
   
“We must remain calm and rigorous regardless of recent tragedies,” said Lea Dordilly, a lawyer for co-accused Bilal Chatra, who was 19 at the time of the thwarted train attack.
   
He was allegedly recruited in Turkey by Abaaoud, and is suspected of being an advance scout for Khazzani in getting into Europe via the migrant trail from Syria.
   
Khazzani does not deny having boarded the train with the intent of committing an attack, but claims to have had a change of heart at the last minute, too late to avoid the confrontation with the Americans.
   
His lawyer Sarah Mauger-Poliak claims Khazzani is a changed man who has rejected radical Islamist doctrine and regrets his actions.
   
The trial is scheduled to last until December 17.
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