In the attack in the Riviera resort of Nice, Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a large truck into crowds of Bastille Day revellers, killing 84, before being shot dead by police.
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French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Monday that the man who killed 84 people in a Bastille Day rampage along Nice’s seaside promenade had no known links to terrorist networks.
Speaking Monday, a French prosecutor said Bouhlel had searched online for information about the recent attack by a gunman at an Orlando nightclub – which was also claimed by ISIS but not believed to be connected directly to the group – and for ISIS propaganda.
Hollande had planned to lift the measures on July 26 but changed tack after the Nice attack by Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel.
But Monthir, Bouhlel’s father, said his son had not shown signs of religious extremism, despite suffering from mental health problems.
While previous attacks saw grand displays of national unity, there was no semblance of cohesion after the Nice massacre, with Sarkozy joining a long line of opposition politicians who have accused the government of not doing enough to protect the French.
“Everything that should have been done over the last 18 months. wasn’t done”, he told TF1 TV.
France’s far-right National Front party is calling for restrictions on immigration in response to the Nice attack.
Prosecutor Francois Molins’ office, which oversees terrorism investigations, opened a judicial inquiry Thursday into a battery of charges for the suspects, including complicity to murder and possessing weapons tied to a terrorist enterprise.
The Islamic State statement said Bouhlel was following their calls to target citizens of countries fighting the extremists, but it’s unclear whether he had concrete links to the group.
The first sign that the Nice truck attacker was planning something violent came about eight months ago, when he snapped a picture of a news story headlined: “Man deliberately rams vehicle into cafe terrace”.
The image eerily foreshadowed French police fatally shooting Lahouaiej-Bouhlel in the driver’s seat of the truck when he came to a stop after a 1.2-mile rampage. But authorities say there is evidence that he lived life openly as a bisexual man.
As tributes drew throngs of people back to the scene of the carnage, police investigated, with some four of the six people arrested after the attack transferred early on Monday for questioning at the headquarters of France’s counter-terrorism department in the western edge of Paris.
“All debate is legitimate, but this attitude of putting the unity of the country into question just plays into the hands of the terrorists”, Valls said in the interview.
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It is the fourth time that parliament has proposed prolonging the state of emergency, and the move now needs to be approved by the Senate.
