Man tries self-immolation with wine, held for weapon images

PARIS – A man who doused himself with wine and tried to self-immolate on a train and waved a phone showing images of armed combatants is being held by French police on a potential terrorism charge.

A French official said Wednesday the man was tackled by a soldier and a police officer, both off duty. The high-speed TGV train was travelling Tuesday from Lille in the north to Montpellier in the south.

The official said the man, who identified himself as Syrian, grew angry when a conductor asked him for a ticket, which he didn’t have. The official wasn’t authorized to discuss the detention publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The newspaper Le Progres, which first reported the arrest, said the wine was a rose.

The man was held on a possible charge of condoning terrorism, having allegedly brandished his phone with photos and video of combatants with weapons, the official said.

Tuesday marked the third anniversary of gun and bomb attacks that killed 130 people in the Bataclan concert hall and other sites in Paris in 2015.