ATTACKER KNOWN TO POLICE
But nothing in his past of relatively minor offences indicated a political motive
Driver had minor criminal history, but wasn’t flagged as terrorist threat,
NICE, FRANCE— The man who carried out the Bastille Day rampage bears a striking resemblance to the perpetrators of similar attacks in Paris and Brussels over the past two years: a petty criminal known to authorities who was not considered a serious threat to national security.
The attacker, identified by authorities on Friday as Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian-born delivery man, fits an increasingly familiar profile. Bouhlel had a significant record of crime and violence, albeit one that does not currently include any known links to terrorist networks, Paris prosecutor François Molins said.
Bouhlel’s record stretches back six years and includes charges for threats and violence. In March, Molins told reporters, he was sentenced to six months in prison for assault with a weapon for an incident in January.
It was not clear whether Bouhlel, who killed at least 84 people when he drove a truck into a crowd Thursday, served any portion of that sentence.
Like Bouhlel, many of the people implicated in recent attacks in France and in Belgium had police records that included convictions for violence or petty crimes. While some were on the radar of intelligence services monitoring radical networks, others had been relative unknowns until they struck.
When police finally shot Bouhlel to death after a rampage extending more than a kilometre of Nice’s pop- ular seaside stretch, they found a small arsenal in the 17-tonne truck’s cab, including automatic pistols, assault rifles and a grenade.
But left unclear Friday was a motive: Bouhlel did not leave behind a declaration of intent, and Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has not asserted responsibility for his actions, although supporters celebrated the attack on social media.
Molins said the attack precisely fit the profile of Daesh extremist violence and threats but added that Bouhlel had no known links with terrorist groups.
The details of Bouhlel’s journey from petty criminal to mass murder remain opaque.
On Friday, Corentin Delobel, the lawyer who had defended him in March, was interviewed on French television.
“When I defended him in March,” Delobel said, “he didn’t have an apparent psychological problem, and he did not have the air of someone radicalized.”
Even if Bouhlel was “not at all re- spectful of police officers or justice,” he was “very calm, nonchalant, indifferent,” Delobel said.
The descriptions of Bouhlel’s criminal history came hours after Prime Minister Manuel Valls described the mass killing as a terrorist attack that had struck France “in its soul on 14 July, our national day.”
Valls said late Friday night that Bouhlel is a “terrorist linked to radical Islam.”
The choice of Bastille Day highlighted another uncomfortable commonality between Bouhlel and other terrorists implicated in the three major recent attacks in France: He had French nationality, choosing to attack a country — and a city — that was also his own.
On Friday morning, police raided his apartment in the predominately working-class north section of the city, where many minority residents live in complexes of concrete-block, highrise buildings far from the seaside Promenade des Anglais that Bouhlel attacked.
A 68-year-old neighbour who declined to be identified beyond his first name, Mohamed, said he had seen the suspected assailant in the apartment complex and thought he had a wife and three children.
Molins said that Bouhlel was married with children, but did not say how many.
Police were investigating Friday whether Bouhlel had acted alone, or whether he had support from accomplices. His ex-wife was detained Friday for questioning.
Citing Tunisian security officials, Reuters reported that Bouhlel was originally from the Tunisian town of Msaken and had last visited the North African nation four years ago.