“Chokri Chafroud should not be the expiatory victim”, pleaded this Friday, at the trial of the Nice attack, the lawyers of this 43-year-old Tunisian, friend of the killer of the Promenade des Anglais, who never found the right words to defend yourself. “He has to come out,” asked Me Chloé Arnoux in a vibrant argument, the last of the defense, which moved even on the benches of the civil parties.
“He has been in detention for six years because the other [Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel] wrote fake stuff. He did not do anything. To acquit him would be neither a scandal nor a shame but the triumph of judicial virtue, ”also pleaded Me Florian François-Jacquemin.
“He is stupid”
Friend of Nice of Tunisian nationality who killed 86 people driving a ram truck on July 14, 2016, Chokri Chafroud is being prosecuted for terrorist criminal association (AMT) and faces twenty years of criminal imprisonment. The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) demanded fifteen years’ imprisonment against him while acknowledging that the facts of which he is accused were “less incriminating” than those alleged against Ramzi Arefa, who admitted having provided a gun to the killer.
Friend of the killer certainly but what did he know of the murderous plans of his compatriot, shot by the police at the end of his mad dash? Nothing or almost nothing, replied his lawyers in substance. “Chokri Chafroud did not provide a weapon, he did not help him rent a truck, he certainly got on July 12 in the truck that was used for the attack, but it was not to make a location because the route taken was neither in the same direction, nor in the same place” as the route of the fateful, insisted Me François-Jacquemin.
Coming from a rural family in southern Tunisia, Chokri Chafroud left school at the age of 11. After passing through Italy, he settled illegally in Nice in the summer of 2015 where he lived “like a tramp”. It was there, at the end of 2015, that he met Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel. He returned to Tunisia at the beginning of 2016, continued to exchange with him via social networks. He will return to Nice in the spring. During the hearing, an expert had noted that his intelligence was “in the lower average”. “I’m sorry for him, but he’s stupid”, said without taking gloves Me Chloé Arnoux.
According to his lawyers, the killer was “crazy” and “perverted”
If he finds himself in the box it is mainly because of an SMS sent by Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, six minutes before launching his truck into the crowd, at Ramzi Arefa. This SMS, read and reread at the bar since the start of the trial, all the parties know it by heart. “I wanted to tell you that the pistol you gave me yesterday is very good, so we’re bringing 5 from your friend’s house, 7, rue Miollis, 5th floor. This is for Chokri and his friends, [ils] are ready for next month. »
Why so many details? Did Lahouaiej-Bouhlel deliberately incriminate his friends? It will be up to the court to decide, but for the advice of Chokri Chafroud, their “opinion” is that the killer was “crazy” and “perverse”. The prosecution and civil parties refute this thesis. They summon this image of a vehicle rushing into the crowd that he mentioned three times in messages to the killer on Facebook.
Three months before the attack, Chokri Chafroud had written to his friend: “Go ahead and load the truck with 2,000 tons of iron and fuck, cut its brakes my dear, and I’ll watch”. Asked at the hearing about this sentence, the accused had awkwardly mentioned “Tunisian humor”. He will have one last opportunity to speak on Monday morning before the court retires to deliberate. The verdict is expected on Tuesday.