Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel staked out the Nice promenade with his rented truck twice in the two days before he smashed the vehicle into a crowd of people watching Bastille Day fireworks on Thursday night, July 14, according to a source close to the probe.
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Nicolas Leslie, a University of California, Berkeley, student who was missing after a truck drove through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, killing 84, died in the attack, the school said Sunday, relaying information it had received from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
ISIL claimed responsibility for last week’s attack, though Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Monday that investigators have found no sign yet that attacker Mohamed Lahouaiyej Bouhlel had links to a particular network.
Seeking to explain why France is so often targeted, most recently with a truck rampage in Nice last week claimed by the Islamic State group, Hollande cited the country’s traditions of liberty and human rights. Bouhlel’s estranged wife was arrested at her apartment Friday and released Sunday morning without charge, her attorney, Jean-Yves Garino, told CNN. The official provided no details on their identities, and said five people detained previously remain in custody.
The prosecutor said the investigation made “notable advances” since the Bastille Day attack by Bouhlel, a Tunisian who had been living legally in Nice for years. Garino said the woman, the mother of Bouhlel’s three children, had not been in contact with the attacker since they were in the middle of divorce proceedings.
A crowd of people filled the Promenade des Anglais in Nice where the attack took place last Thursday, leaving around 300 wounded.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said there was no evidence of Bouhlel’s allegiance to IS but a search of his computer “showed a clear, recent interest for the radical jihadist movement”.
“We are now confronted with individuals open to Daesh’s message to engage in extremely violent actions without necessarily having been trained or having the weapons to carry out a mass (casualty) attack”, Cazeneuve said earlier.
At least 10 children were among the dead, as well as tourists from Ukraine, Switzerland, Germany, and a local Russian association said there were about 10 victims from Russia.
He had no record of making militant statements and was not known to the intelligence services, the minister said.
Some of Nice’s beachside restaurants were reopening for business on Tuesday, and the final section of the Promenade des Anglais was set to reopen to traffic following three days of official mourning.
But French authorities believe that may have changed.
Among those still detained is a 38-year-old Albanian suspected of providing Bouhlel with a pistol he used to fire at the police who shot him dead.
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Many in France are also angry at police and authorities for not preventing the deadly attack, even though France was under a state of emergency imposed after Islamic State attacks previous year in Paris.
