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, according to a source close to the probe.
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The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said the attacker “appears to have become radicalised very quickly”.
French officials could not confirm Monday that attacker Mohamed Lahouaiyej Bouhlel had been approached by an Algerian recruiter, saying that the investigation is ongoing.
Police examine the scene around the truck on the Promenade des Anglais the day after 84 people died in the attack on the seaside French Riviera town..
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins, who oversees terrorism investigations in France, said people interviewed by police described the Tunisian father of three as “someone who did not practice the Muslim religion, ate pork, drank alcohol, took drugs and had an unbridled sexual activity”.
Bouhlel was shot to death by police after he barreled down the crowded Promenade des Anglais for nearly a mile, crushing and hitting people who had gathered to watch fireworks. As passersby placed flowers, personal messages and candles in makeshift memorials on the storied Promenade des Anglais and in cities across France, the nation paused at noon for a moment of silence commemorating the victims and their families. Bouhlel’s family, however, remembered him as a man who, in the word of his uncle, “didn’t pray, didn’t go to the mosque and ate pork”.
Former president Nicolas Sarkozy has criticised the French Government for failing its people, by not doing more to prevent the attacks in Nice and Paris.
Emergency rule has been in place since the attacks on Paris last November in which Islamist militants killed 130 people.
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. A special church service was being held at a Nice cathedral on Sunday in honour of the victims.
The Islamic State group “is encouraging individuals unknown to our services to stage attacks. that is without a doubt the case in the Nice attack”, he said Sunday. IS said he was following their call to target citizens of countries fighting the extremists. When his wife left him, a neighbor says, he went insane.
Cazeneuve called for volunteers to boost security forces who have already been reinforced and are on high alert under an eight-month-old state of emergency.
“Terrorism will be part of our daily lives for a long time”, he said.
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According to France’s BFMTV, investigators have gleaned that Bouhlel-who left at least 84 people dead in the French city-had a busy sex life, with pictures of both female and male conquests on his phone.
