The trial of the Nice attack ends Monday morning, after more than three months of hearing, with the last words of the defendants before the special assize court of Paris withdraws to deliberate. The verdict is expected on Tuesday. As provided for in the procedure, President Laurent Raviot must, from 9:30 a.m., give the floor to the seven defendants present – an eighth is tried in his absence – before closing the proceedings.
The special assize court, made up of five professional magistrates and their four deputies, will then retire to an undisclosed location in the Paris region before returning on Tuesday to the major trial room of the Paris Courthouse to announce its verdict.
Shot dead by the police at the end of his murderous race, the Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, author of the ram truck attack which left 86 dead – including fifteen children – and more than 450 injured on the evening of July 14, 2016 on the promenade of the English, was the notable absentee from the trial even if his name has been pronounced at each hearing since September 5. None of the eight people tried is for complicity with the killer.
Association of terrorist criminals
While three of the defendants are being prosecuted for terrorist criminal association (AMT), the other five defendants are being tried for common law offenses relating to weapons legislation. The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) requested 15 years in prison against the three main defendants while asking that the AMT not be held against one of them, the Niçois Ramzi Arefa, 27, who admitted having provided a pistol to Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel. The assailant had used it to threaten people who had tried to arrest him and to shoot at police officers.
Small drug trafficker, attracted by easy money, Ramzi Arefa “could not know the radicalization” of the future killer of the Promenade des Anglais given their reduced contacts, argued the Pnat.
The other two defendants prosecuted for AMT, the Franco-Tunisian Mohamed Ghraieb, 47, and the Tunisian Chokri Chafroud, 43, certainly “committed less incriminating acts”, explained the Pnat but “they knew, unlike Ramzi Arefa, that Lahouaiej Bouhlel was in a position to commit an attack”. These three men face twenty years in prison.
Against the five other defendants, including four Albanians including a woman and the Tunisian judged in his absence, the Pnat demanded sentences of between two and ten years in prison. These last five people each face ten years in prison. “There will be frustrations, it is inevitable”, has already warned the prosecution to the address of some 2,500 civil parties constituted.