There are “elements which may suggest that he tried to put his entourage in trouble”, advances a police officer from the anti-terrorist sub-directorate (Sdat). The “hypothesis” according to which the author of the Nice attack would have voluntarily left clues to implicate acquaintances, out of revenge or sadism, was mentioned on Tuesday at the trial organized in Paris.
Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a Tunisian from Nice, killed 86 and injured more than 400 on the evening of July 14, 2016 at the wheel of a ram truck on the Promenade des Anglais before being shot dead by the police. All week, the special assize court of Paris will try to identify his personality and his motivations.
Text messages, photos and handwritten notes
No complicity was established during the investigation, but three of the eight defendants at trial, members of his entourage, were dismissed for association of terrorist criminals (AMT). They were quickly implicated after the discovery on the assailant of an unlocked mobile phone, displaying an SMS sent a few minutes before the attack. This message mentioned the name of two of them: “Salam Ramzi [Arefa…], the pistol you gave me yesterday is very good. So bring five [supplémentaires]this is for Chokri [Chafroud] and his friends “.
An almost identical voice note, sent a few hours earlier, specified: “Chokri and his friends are ready for next month, now they are at Walid”, the middle name of Mohamed Ghraieb, the third accused returned for AMT.
In addition, at Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’s, 39 photo prints from photos taken with his phone were found, showing him in the company of other people at the beach or at the café, sometimes annotated with first names. There is also a sheet with a handwritten list of names and phone numbers.
A “first” in a terrorist case
“Do you think it was an error on his part, panic, or a desire for manipulation? “Asks the president of the court, Laurent Raviot. “Certainly not panic”, replies the investigator, who recalls that the assailant has long prepared and matured his criminal act. At the invitation of a defense lawyer, he admits that “this is the first time that[il a] case” to this type of elements in a terrorist case, an area generally marked by the will of “concealment” of the protagonists.
“We have no objective elements that allow us to understand why he did that. I think there is a desire on his part to find the people in question. I don’t have a definitive hypothesis with supporting evidence. The analysis of these elements will be made by the court”, specifies however the policeman of the Sdat.
Previously, the investigator had painted a portrait of a “sex maniac”, “fascinated by violence”, including that of the propaganda of the Islamic State (IS) organization, but in whom “the will to do harm » precedes possible jihadist convictions.
Radicalization “in the last weeks”
On his profile, the investigator recalls the testimonies of his ex-wife evoking “almost daily” domestic violence or his sentence in March 2016 to six months in prison suspended for having hit a man in the head.
In December 2014, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel deplored in an SMS to his wife the death of the author of the attack on the Joué-lès-Tours police station. He consults IS propaganda photos from March 2015, after the attack at the Bardo museum, near Tunis. But “there is, I think, an adherence to the violence of the actions committed, without there necessarily being a religious aspect which is significant”, analyzes the police officer.
On the other hand, “what lets us say that there has been a radicalization in recent weeks is the exponential nature of the consultations” from the end of June 2016. His friends also reported what the investigator describes as ” weak signals of religiosity”. To one, he reproached for drinking alcohol, to another, he entrusted to do Ramadan and offered to go to the mosque, a third noticed that Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was listening to the Koran in his car and was criticized for “his shorts being too short”.
The Nice attack was claimed by IS two days later, but the investigation did not establish a direct link between the assailant and the jihadist group.