He spoke after an emergency security meeting in Paris, his fourth such meeting since Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel rammed through a Bastille Day event, killing 84 people.
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An Albanian man named as Artan and a women who is a French-Albanian dual national, identified as Enkeldja, are suspected of providing Lahouaiej-Bouhlel with a pistol and were charged with “breaking the law on weapons in relation to a terrorist group”.
All were locked up pending further investigation.
Authorities initially said Bouhlel had radicalized very quickly.
François Molins, state prosecutor also on Thursday suggested that the killer had planned the heinous attack for several months. He noted, though, there is no evidence Bouhlel or his alleged collaborators had any connection to the Islamic State, although the militant group referred to Bouhlel as a soldier in their terrorism campaign.
Telephone contents were used to link the five to Bouhlel, and allegedly to support roles in the carnage. “I am happy they have brought soldiers of Allah to finish the job”.
The five suspects will be presented to anti-terrorism judges later Thursday and Molins said prosecutors had requested they be charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism, among other crimes.
It is odd that the suspect would announce his plans for the attack and a possible future one via traceable and indiscreet means of communication such as audio recordings, text and Facebook messages.
People stand in front of flowers, candles and messages laid at a makeshift memorial in Nice on July 18, 2016, in tribute to the victims of the deadly attack on the Promenade des Anglais seafront which killed 84 people.
Stressing the worldwide nature of the fight against IS, Hollande said, “Even if was France that was attacked July 14, it’s the world that was targeted”.
The inquiry – to be headed by the police oversight body – was announced Thursday by Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve after mounting criticism of the measures taken to ensure the celebrations were secure.
Rescue workers help an injured woman to get in a ambulance on July 15, 2016, after a truck drove into a crowd watching a fireworks display in the French Riviera town of Nice.
The newspaper Libération reported Thursday that only one municipal police vehicle was positioned at the spot where Lahouaiej Bouhlel barreled through and on to the promenade, and it said that although state and city officials had agreed on – and stuck to – a security plan for Bastille Day, the government misrepresented those measures after the attack. He said any police “shortcomings” will be carefully addressed but defended French authorities’ actions. “There is no place for polemics, there is only place for truth and transparency”, he said.
Hollande increased military support for Iraq in its fight against IS extremists as a result of the Nice attack, and French lawmakers extended a state of emergency in place since the deadly November 13 Islamic State attacks on Paris.
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Sandra Bertin, who is in charge of Nice’s system of security cameras, told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper she had been “harassed for an hour” by an unnamed Interior Ministry official on the phone after a “commissioner” came to see her the day after the attack.
