EVERYTHING IS NORMAL
He calls family and sends selfie hours before slaughter of 84
TRUCK terrorist Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel told his family “everything is normal” before killing 84 people.
Gym hulk Bouhlel, 31, rang his brother hours before the Bastille Day massacre in Nice and even sent a selfie.
His last words were: “I am happy.” ISIS has claimed responsibility for the carnage.
BASTILLE Day killer Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel sent a smirking selfie to his family just hours before slaughtering 84 people in the Nice atrocity.
Bouhlel, 31, made a chirpy phone call home before sending brother Jaber a snap of himself posing with pals in the French resort at 4pm.
At 10.30pm the Tunisian, who was on medication to control his rages and said to suffer severe psychotic attacks, drove a 19-tonne articulated lorry through crowds watching a fireworks display on the Promenade des Anglais, and was shot dead by police.
Brother Jaber Bouhlel, 19, said: “He sent a selfie and told me he was happy and everything in his life was normal.
“Later when we heard about what was happening in Nice we started to send him messages asking if he was all right. We here were sending him messages until two in the morning.”
Our exclusive picture of Bouhlel celebrating his high school graduation aged 17 shows a angel-faced teenager in Msaken, Tunisia. However, he had been plagued by bouts of severe mental illness since childhood.
By the time the photo was taken, friends say he had already begun drinking and smoking strong cannabis, which worsened his attacks.
Another picture shows his gymhardened physique as he strolled along a beach in France last December.
Bouhlel’s brother- in- law Chokri Amimi, 35, told the Sunday Mirror: “Mohamed was mentally sick from childhood. From 12 years old he had problems and he suffered these shock attacks at school.
“He was one of seven brothers and three sisters, but he was always the ill one. He did not help himself. He smoked lots of drugs, like strong weed, and drank everything that was going despite knowing he was mentally sick.
“He may have said he was popular with the girls but only God knows if that is true.
“Then he moved to France in about 2005 and married his aunt’s daughter, who lived in Nice. But the family are always in conflict, they are always fighting. He was always doing drugs and it did not help the fits.
“His wife knew he was ill, but never told the police about it. She may have to answer questions about it now.”
VIOLENT
His estranged wife Hajer Khalfallah was arrested on Friday. Their three children, aged five, three and 18 months, are being held under police protection in France while she is questioned about what she knew of her husband’s murderous plans.
But Bouhlel’s father Mohamed Mondher insisted his son was mentally ill but not a radicalised terrorist.
He said: “From 2002 to 2004 he had problems that led to a nervous breakdown. He’d get angry and shout and broke everything in front of him. He was violent and very ill. We took him to the doctor and he was put on drugs.
“Whenever there was a crisis we took him back again.
“He was always alone. Always silent, refusing to talk.”
Mr Mondher insisted his son had “no connection with religion. He didn’t fast and keep Ramadan. He drank. He even took drugs”.
Family and friends in Nice described Bouhlel as a “weird loner” who beat his wife, did drugs and had a “George Clooney” haircut. Bouhlel even took a knife to his daughter’s teddy-bear, one former French neighbour said. “We often used to hear him shouting and throwing things around,” a neighbour said. When he split up with his wife, he defecated everywhere in the flat, shredded his daughter’s teddy-bear with a knife and slashed mattresses, they said.
Other neighbours said he also had periods of silence when he appeared to retreat into himself.
“We never saw him bringing friends home. Sometimes he seemed depressed and hardly spoke,” one said. Police were last night probing claims Bouhlel sent his family £84,000 in the days before, persuading friends to smuggle bundles of cash back home.
He had not been home in four years, and his brother Jaber said the family were stunned by the “fortune” he amassed while living in France.
“He used to send us small sums of money regularly like most Tunisians working abroad,” Jaber said. “But then he sent us all that money, a fortune.
“Mohamed sent us all of his savings, all of his worth in France. He had worked for eight years and this was the money he saved in France.”
Locals said the cash was being used to fund a property being built.
Bouhlel was already known to police for a history of petty crime, including
He was mentally sick but didn’t help himself, smoking a lot of strong weed CHOKRI AMIMI BOUHLEL’S BROTHER-IN-LAW
He’d get angry and shout and break everything. He was violent and very ill
MOHAMED MONDHER FATHER OF NICE KILLER BOUHLEL
theft and domestic violence, but was not under surveillance as a terrorist threat.
He was handed a six-month suspended sentence for violent conduct in March after hurling a wooden pallet at a driver in a road rage attack.
But Paris prosecutor Francois Mol ins said he could have been inspired by calls from extremist groups to carr y out terrorist atrocities across France. Detectives were last night trying to establish whether Bouhlel and four men arrested in police swoops across Nice following the attacks might have formed a distinct Islamic State cell. The four and Bouhlel’s wife are under armed guard and being quizzed by dedi- cated anti-terrorist judges from Paris. Anti-terror police swooped amid fears the attack was coordinated by a sleeper cell.
Islamic State yesterday claimed responsibility for the Nice outrage as they hailed Bouhlel as a “soldier of Islam”. A string of attacks have been carried out by young Tuni- sian-born men involved in Islamist terror cel l s at home and throughout the world.
Twenty-one European tourists were massacred inside the most famous museum in capital Tunis in March 2015.
Three months later IS gunman Seifeddine Rezgui massacred 38 holidaymakers in June 2015 in Sousse, 12 miles from Msaken.
A US air strike last year targeted a suspected IS training camp near Tripoli, Libya, in which most of the 50 fighters killed were reportedly Tunisians.
Security experts now fear Thursday’s attacks are a sign of much worse to come in Europe.