At the specially composed Court of Assizes of Paris,
The question is at the heart of the debates: Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, the driver of the truck which drove into the crowd on July 14, 2016, in Nice, was he so stupid as to sow lots of clues allowing investigators to easily find his accomplices? Or did he want, for some reason that remains unexplained, to trap men who had no connection with his planned attack? The president of the specially composed assize court, Laurent Raviot, still seems to have trouble making up his mind. Admittedly, the magistrate is the “first to find it strange that the terrorist gave so much operational information” in the messages exchanged with the accused before the attack. “But the information they give has a reality” and “refer to exact things”, he also underlines this Thursday.
And the equivocal answers given by Chokri Chafroud, 43, do not help him to see more clearly. Black trucker sweater, blue jeans, the Tunisian – who is assisted by an interpreter – swears during his interrogation not to understand what he is doing in the dock. He had met the terrorist at the Gaulois, a bar in Nice, and had sympathized with him. A “normal” friend with whom he shared a coffee or strolled on weekends. “I often asked him for help with housing, he talked to me a lot about his work” which he complained about, he explains, his hands resting on the plexiglass of the box. The two men are close enough for Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel to put his friend’s photo in the background of the phone he had on him the night of the attack.
“Tunisian Humor”
The two were also chatting together on Facebook. Certain vehement messages, exchanged between January and July 2016, may suggest that the accused shared with the terrorist a certain form of violent radicalization. President Raviot reads some of them. “I will fuck them with the sword”, “I will fuck their heads”, “Chokri chafroud the biggest bastard in France”. “It’s a way of talking between Tunisians, it’s our mentality”, it was “joke”, replies the accused. The magistrate resumes his reading. “I’m going to fuck all the Tunisians, I’ll fuck all the rich, you son of a bitch, I’ll cut their throats all.” In March 2016, Chafroud evokes the head of the French government in these terms. “I swear to you, I fuck his mother (…) this one I tear his ass. »
In April, when Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel spoke to him about his work, Chafroud wrote to him: “Load the truck with 2,000 tons of iron and fuck him cut the brakes my friend and I am watching. “Why are you writing this?” asks the magistrate. “He often spoke to me about his work which annoyed him. I wanted to say that it was necessary to cut short this conversion which returned all the time. The president of the court is circumspect. “If he is fed up with his work, he is told to stop it. There, he is told to use his work tool to do obvious harm. The accused assures us that it was “Tunisian humor”.
Did he also know that his friend was looking, in July 2016, for a truck to rent? Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel in any case sent him an enigmatic text message saying “Ada station wal.gr. @”. “I did not understand this message, it was one of the messages that I did not understand and that he sent all the time”, underlines the accused, adding that Ada could have been the first name of a girl, the terrorist being, according to very focused on sex. One thing is in any case certain: Chokri Chafroud got into the vehicle that will be used to commit the attack two days later. “The mere fact of being in the truck does not make you an accomplice,” President Raviot reminds him. On the other hand, observes the magistrate, the statements of the accused have ceased to be fluctuating throughout the investigations.
“Why make statements to the police that aggravate his case? »
In particular on this weapon that the terrorist would have asked him to find, in exchange for the erasure of a debt of 100 euros, to “decorate his house”. If he swears today that he did not follow up on this request, Chokri Chafroud had given another explanation to the police in custody. He would have found one from a cigarette seller but the transaction did not take place in the end. “Why make statements to the police that aggravate his case if it is not true? asks President Raviot. “I was not well, everything was confused for me”, proclaims the accused.
His contact details were found on a sheet by the police during a search of the terrorist’s home, who had not even bothered to erase the text messages he sent to his contacts, without going through an application to encrypt the messages. posts. In one of them, he asks for new weapons and says: “Chokri and his friends are ready for next month”. “Was Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel capable of inventing a number of things to harm those around him? Was he right to resent you and want revenge to the point of implicating you in a terrorism case? asks the magistrate. “I don’t think so,” replies Chokri Chafroud, adding that he did not know what the terrorist had in mind. He faces twenty years of criminal imprisonment.