Nice killer’s motives remain a mystery
Police arrest 3 more in the French city as Daesh claims Bouhlel is one of its soldiers
Until he murdered 84 revellers on Bastille Day, Mohammad Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s most serious run-in with the law was throwing a wooden plank during an argument with another driver.
“There was nothing in his past that could have foreseen the acts he’s now accused of,” Justice Minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas said on RTL Radio.
The 31-year-old Tunisian with French residency was killed by police after he drove a rented 19-ton refrigerator truck for about 2 kilometres down Nice’s seafront Promenade des Anglais, killing those 84 people. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Bouhlel was radicalised “very quickly,” without providing more details.
Daesh news agency called the man who carried out the Nice attack one of its “soldiers,” but even the radical group stopped short of claiming it had organised the attack.
Paris anti-terrorism prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters that Bouhlel wasn’t on any list of radicalised individuals and investigators were unaware of any contacts with terror groups.
In Tunisian city of Msaken, Bouhlel’s father Mohammad Mondher Lahouaiej Bouhlel said his son had suffered from depression but had nothing to do with religion.
The French government has been criticised for lax security at the show, which marked Bastille Day.
Yesterday, Cazeneuve called on young citizens to become reservists and help boost security forces in the wake of the latest terror attack. France’s “operational reservists” include French citizens with or without military experience as well as former soldiers.
French authorities, meanwhile, said five people believed to be linked to the truck driver were in police custody, including his estranged wife. Three arrests were made yesterday and two on Friday.
The man responsible for turning a night of celebration into one of carnage in the seaside city of Nice was a petty criminal who hadn’t been on the radar of French intelligence services before the attack.
The Daesh group claimed Mohammad Lahouaiej Bouhlel as a “soldier” yesterday, but what is known so far about Bouhlel suggests a troubled, angry man with little interest in Islam.
The 31-year-old was born in Msaken, a town in Tunisia, but moved to France years ago and was living in the country legally, working as a delivery driver.
At an apartment bloc in the Quartier des Abattoirs, on the outskirts of Nice, neighbours described the father of three as a volatile man, prone to drinking and womanising, and in the process of divorcing his wife.
His father said Bouhlel had violent episodes during which “he broke everything he found around him”.
“Each time he had a crisis, we took him to the doctor who gave him medication,” Mohammad Mondher Lahouaiej Bouhlel told BFM television.
His son hadn’t visited Tunisia in four years and hadn’t stayed in contact with his family, he said.
“What I know is that he didn’t pray, he didn’t go to the mosque, he had no ties to religion,” said the father, noting that Bouhlel didn’t respect the Islamic fasting rituals during Ramadan.
In a news conference on Friday, hours after the attack in which 84 people were killed and 202 were wounded, prosecutors said they had found no links to the Daesh.
Bouhlel had had a series of run-ins with the law for threatening behaviour, violence and theft over the past six years. In March, he was given a sixmonth suspended sentence by a Nice court for a road-rage incident.
His court-appointed lawyer, Corentin Delobel, said he observed “no radicalisation whatsoever,” and Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Bouhlel was never placed on a watch list for radicals.
Records show that the 19-metric-tonne truck that was rammed through the seaside crowd in Nice was rented on the outskirts of the city on July 11 and was overdue on the night of the attack.
About 25 minutes before the July 14 fireworks show, a popular event that draws hundreds of thousands of people to the Nice seafront each year, Bouhlel climbed into the vehicle and drove towards the city centre.
Shortly after 10.30pm, he drove onto the Promenade des Anglais that had been closed to traffic for the night.
Witnesses described seeing how Bouhlel purposely steered the truck to hit men, women and children as they tried to flee.
“It was such a nice atmosphere before this started,” recalled Sanchia Lambert, a tourist from Sweden who had come to visit family in Nice. “
Her husband, John Lambert, said the couple was almost struck by Bouhlel.
“I saw his face,” Lambert told The Associated Press. “He was totally focused.”