The crowd paid their respects to the 84 victims killed during the Bastille Day attack.
Advertisement
Bouhlel, who mowed down the crowd celebrating Bastille Day, was given logistical support from the five suspect to prepare the fatal attack, Molins said.
At 5pm on July 14 – the day of the attack on crowds watching a firework display in Nice – Lahouaiej-Bouhlel recorded a message saying: “Chokri and his friends are ready for next month, they are now with Walid”, according to Le Monde.
All were locked up pending further investigation.
Authorities had initially pointed to a rapid radicalization by Bouhlel, after several members of his family and friends said he showed no sign of being religious.
In May a year ago, he took a photo of an article about the drug Captagon, an amphetamine used by jihadists in Syria. Telephone records were used to link the five to Bouhlel, and allegedly to support roles in the carnage.
“I am not Charlie … They have brought in the soldiers of Allah to finish the job”.
Bouhlel received a text from one of the alleged accomplices a few days after the January 2015 Islamist attacks on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a Jewish deli in Paris saying: “I am not Charlie …”
The same man filmed the bloody scene on the promenade hours after the attack.
The request comes as the government faces growing criticism over security measures the night of the attack, and the cameras could show where and how police were deployed.
The local authorities in Nice have refused a request by French anti-terror police to destroy CCTV images of last week’s lorry attack.
That version of events was disputed by Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve.
Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel rammed a 19-tonne truck into a crowd along the promenade after a Bastille Day fireworks display.
Speaking to reporters here in the French capital, François Molins said 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.
“We will see proof that the preparations were, from the start, of the required serious standard”, the socialist leader, who is facing elections next year, said during a visit to Ireland.
President Francois Hollande announced on Friday that France would send artillery to Iraq next month for the fight against IS.
French authorities had previously said six people were in custody in connection with the attacks.
Advertisement
“There’s no room for polemics, there’s only room for transparency”, he said. Using witness statements and photos, Liberation showed Thursday that only one local police auto was stationed at the entrance to the Nice boulevard on July 14.
