Cazeneuve said Thursday that only local police, who are more lightly armed, were guarding the entrance to the Promenade des Anglais when Bouhlel drove a 19-metric ton (20-ton) truck onto the sidewalk in Nice before mowing down pedestrians who had gathered to watch a holiday fireworks show.
Advertisement
Prosecutor Francois Molins said the five suspects now in custody face preliminary terrorism charges for their alleged roles in helping 31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel in the July 14 attack in the southern French city.
Speaking to reporters here in the French capital, François Molinssaid an analysis of the attacker’s cellphone revealed photographs and search histories suggesting that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the 31-year-old Tunisian-born driver of the truck, had contemplated an attack as early as 2015.
Mr. Molins said that investigators had been able to confirm “not only the premeditated character of Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s deadly act” but also that he had “benefited from support and complicity in the preparation and carrying out of his criminal act”. Molins said that the charges would include murder, attempted murder, terrorist conspiracy, and the possession and transportation of weapons.
The five are now in custody and face preliminary terrorism charges for their alleged roles in the attack.
The others are 22-year-old Franco-Tunisian Ramzi A., 38-year-old Albanian Artan H., and his wife Enkeledja Z. who holds both French and Albanian nationality.
On May 26 past year, he took a photo of an article about the drug Captagon which Molins said was “used by some jihadists responsible for attacks”. “I am glad, they brought in Allah’s soldiers to finish the job”. In the aftermath of the January 2015 attack on the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo, for instance, one of the men in the group sent him the following message: “I am not Charlie”.
An internal police investigation into the security measures has been launched.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve’s clarification comes after a newspaper accused French authorities of lacking transparency in their handling of the massacre.
French anti-terrorism prosecutor Francois Molins announced the developments in the investigation during a news conference Thursday.
Two days after the attack, Cazeneuve said that the “national police were present, and very present, on the Promenade des Anglais” and added that police vehicles blocked access to the promenade. The security measure had been in place since the November 13 Paris attacks that killed 130 victims and were claimed by the Islamic State group.
No official list of those killed in the July 14 attack has been released, but it is known they included French, Americans, Germans, Ukrainians, Swiss, Tunisians, Poles and a Russian national.
After the newspaper Liberation raised questions about the extent of security, how many police and what level of police were present on the promenade, the French Interior Ministry opened Thursday a “technical inquiry” to try to head off speculation.
Advertisement
The National Assembly, meanwhile, extended France’s state of emergency for six more months.
