
PARIS — The suspected terror attack thwarted by American and British passengers aboard a high-speed European train has brought railway security sharply into focus. The alleged gunman, believed to be a 25-year-old Moroccan named Ayob El Khazzani, boarded the Amsterdam-to-Paris train equipped with an assault rifle, automatic pistol, nine cartridge clips and a box-cutter. More than a decade after the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people, and days after what could have been another such massacre, how can authorities in Europe and across the world rethink railway security? Here are five key points to bear in mind:
TRAIN STATIONS ARE NOT AIRPORTS
Airport security around the world became much tougher after 9/11, with stricter baggage, body and identity checks. In the wake of Friday's foiled attack, Belgium said it will increase baggage checks and patrols on high-speed trains and France announced it will set up an emergency hotline to report "abnormal situations." But can airport security be extended to train stations? Not according to the head of the French national railway company SNCF Guillaume Pepy, who describes such measures in the near future as "unrealistic," as the AFP reports. "There's a choice," he explained: Either you aim for comprehensive security and low (transport) efficiency, or less security and more efficiency. France has some 3,000 train stations, most of which were built during the 19th and 20th centuries — when today's terrorism was unimaginable — and are designed for their five million daily users, which is 20 times more than its airplane users, to be able to flow through as efficiently as possible.
ZERO RISK IS IMPOSSIBLE
Three days after Friday's attempted attack, when security measures were meant to have been significantly reinforced in Belgium and France, the Belgian newspaper La Dernière Heure/Les Sports sent one of its reporters, equipped with a false assault rifle sticking out of his backpack, on a train ride from Brussels to the French city of Lille. Titled "Bringing weapons onto a high-speed train? A walk in the park!" the article explains how the man, also wearing a hoodie, a baseball cap and sunglasses, encountered no control or questions whatsoever — even as he left his bag unattended on his train seat or went up to talk with patrolling soldiers. Christophe Rouget, the spokesperson of the SCSI, one of France's main police unions, told the French weekly L'Obs: "There's no zero risk. The risk exists aboard trains, on the rails, in stations, and we have to learn to live with this threat." François Heisbourg, a former defense official, told The Washington Post that "making a security system work for trains is almost as difficult as ensuring security on roads," comparing such a move to screening every car on the street for bombs.