5 charged over Nice attack
PLANNED CARNAGE: Truck driver’s phone records lead cops to suspects
FIVE suspects have been formally charged over the truck attack in the French Riveria city of Nice that killed 84 people, the Paris prosecutor said on Thursday,
Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who mowed down crowds of people enjoying a Bastille Day fireworks display, had long plotted the carnage, prosecutor Francois Molins said.
The revelations came as the French government continued to be plagued by questions over possible security failings, prompting authorities to launch an investigation into potential oversights.
Molins said photos on Bouhlel’s phone showed he had likely staked out the same July 14 event last year.
It also emerged that one of the five suspects in custody, a Tunisian named Mohamed Oualid G, had filmed the scene the day after the carnage, as it crawled with paramedics and journalists.
The five were brought before anti-terrorism judges on Thursday and charged.
They are 22-year-old FrancoTunisian Ramzi A, 37-year-old Tunisian Chokri C, 40-year-old Tunisian Mohamed Oualid G, 38year-old Albanian Artan H, and his wife, Enkeledja Z, who holds both French and Albanian nationality.
None were known to intelligence services, and only Ramzi A, who was born in Nice, had a criminal record for robbery and drug offences.
He led police to a Kalashnikov and a bag of ammunition on Thursday. However, the purpose of the
on Thursday, in tribute to the victims of the attack on the Promenade des Anglais seafront which killed 84 people. AFP pic
weapons was unclear.
Ramzi, Chokri and Oualid were charged with being accomplices to murder by a terror group.
Ramzi and the Albanian couple faced a second charge, of breaking the law on firearms in relation to a terrorist crime. They were accused of providing Bouhlel with the gun he fired at police officers before he was shot dead.
More than 400 investigators had been poring over evidence since the attack last Thursday, the third in France in 18 months, and it was analyses of Bouhlel’s telephone records that led them to the five suspects.
While the Islamic State group claimed the attack, describing Bouhlel as a “soldier”, investigators
have not found direct proof of his allegiance to the jihadists.
Those interviewed by investigators described the Tunisian father of three as “someone who ate pork, drank alcohol, took drugs and had an unbridled sexual activity”, Molins said earlier this week.
Details of the investigation revealed Bouhlel had been fascinated with jihad. In May last year, he took a photo of an article about the drug Captagon, an amphetamine used by jihadists in Syria.
In July last year, he took photos of the crowd at the Bastille Day fireworks display, and another of crowds watching a concert on Nice’s Promenade Des Anglais.
In April, Chokri sent Bouhlel a Facebook message reading: “Load the truck with 2,000 tonnes of iron... release the brakes, my friend and I will watch”.
Investigators found a text message in Bouhlel’s phone from Oualid in January last year, roughly a year after the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly which spawned the hashtag “I am Charlie” in support of those killed.
The message read: “I am not Charlie. I am happy they have brought soldiers of Allah to finish the job”.
Analyses of Bouhlel’s computer and cellphone showed a wide range of images and Internet searches showing a fascination with violence and jihadist movements, such as alQaeda and IS. Reuters