All were locked up pending further investigation.
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Five people were handed preliminary terrorism charges late Thursday night in the case. “He enjoyed the support and the complicity of several people in the preparation and perpetration of this criminal act”, Paris prosecutor François Molins said in a press conference Thursday. Lahouaiej Bouhlel was also not known to intelligence services.
The four men and one woman, aged between 22 and 40, are accused of helping driver Lahouaiej-Bouhlel prepare the attack. Joggers, cyclists and sun-seekers are back on Nice’s famed Riviera coast, a further sign of normal life returning on the Promenade des Anglais where dozens were killed in last week’s Bastille Day truck attack.
Images taken from Mohamed Oualid G.’s phone also show him filming the Nice promenade after the attack, as well as filming himself, Molins said.
Another of the five’s prints were found on the interior of the truck, Molins said. His opponent, who asked not to be named, said he remembers Bouhlel as an novice who repeatedly made mistakes during the fight, saying he would strike with his head and elbows which are banned by the rules. After he was shot dead by police, two automatic pistols, a magazine, cartridges, two fake Kalashnikovs, and a non-functional grenade were found in the cab.
The attack, which targeted crowds celebrating Bastille Day, has been claimed by so-called Islamic State (IS).
Molins said that 15 people remain in critical condition, of the 330 people hospitalized after the attack.
French officials investigating the terrorist attack in Nice, France, announced it was premeditated and the attacker had help from accomplices.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve acknowledged Thursday that only lightly armed local police were guarding the entrance to a pedestrian zone on the Nice beachfront when Bouhlel sped past a barricade and ran over people.
That’s two Mohammeds for the price of one.
In the aftermath of the attack in Nice, disagreements have emerged over the scale of police and security force protection around the Promenade des Anglais at the time the attack took place.
Hollande said he decided at an emergency security meeting Friday to send artillery equipment to Iraq next month as part of increased military help to fight IS. “There is no place for polemics, there is only place for truth and transparency”, he said.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the government “has nothing to hide” and added that, “in this moment we are in need of unity”.
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In a related development, France’s lawmakers voted Wednesday to extend the state of emergency for another six months, continuing greater police search-and-arrest powers without advance clearance from judges.
