This Wednesday, the Nice prosecutor’s office voted in favor of a reclassification of the facts as “involuntary homicides and injuries” in the investigation into the security measures during the Nice attack. More than 400 people were injured and 86 others died on July 14, 2016 on the Promenade des Anglais, when Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a 30-year-old Tunisian living in Nice, drove into the crowd at the wheel of a 19-tonne truck .
Nice prosecutor Xavier Bonhomme told AFP that “the facts are likely to be reclassified as homicides and involuntary injuries committed by clumsiness, recklessness and negligence”. The latter had also asked judges to reclassify the facts of “endangering the lives of others” as “involuntary homicides and injuries”, as reported in a document that our colleagues from the Parisian were able to consult.
The trial on the attack itself, which made it possible to judge accomplices of the author of the attack, ended in December with convictions of two to eighteen years of imprisonment, against eight people. But seven years almost to the day after the events, this requalification, which concerns the security set up jointly by the municipal and prefectural authorities for the “Prom’ Party” organized on the evening of the attack, opens a new episode in the investigation.
Four people placed under the status of assisted witnesses
Last week, several local victims’ associations expressed their “real concern” about the legal consequences of this security component. In this part of the investigation, four people were heard and placed under the status of assisted witnesses: the former prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes, Adolphe Colrat, his chief of staff at the time, François-Xavier Lauch, the current mayor of Nice Christian Estrosi, at the time first deputy in charge of security due to multiple mandates, and Philippe Pradal, today first deputy to Estrosi, who held the position of mayor at the time of the attack.