A week after the rampage, five suspects arrested over links to the Tunisian attacker are to appear before anti-terrorism judges who will decide whether to charge them.
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Mollins added that Bouhlel planned the attack for many months and received logistical support for the assault from the five suspects.
Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who mowed down crowds of people enjoying a Bastille Day fireworks display, had long plotted the carnage, prosecutor Francois Molins said.
Early reports suggested Bouhlel, a Tunisian citizen, was recently radicalized, but Molins said investigators confirmed what he termed “the premeditated character” of the attack.
Bouhlel, 31, drove a cargo truck down a public promenade packed with crowds celebrating the French holiday.
“Ramzi A.”, 22-year-old French-Tunisian, convicted of six other crimes including theft, violence and drug use.
All were locked up pending further investigation.
Information gleaned from Bouhlel’s phone and computer records connects him to the possible accomplices, according to Molins. Authorities also found a photograph of a May 15 article on Captagon, which is described by Forbes as a drug used by militants in Syria to “endure battle”.
The message read: “I am not Charlie. They brought the soldiers of Allah to finish the work”.
None of the suspects had known terrorist ties, though at least one – a 21-year-old French-Tunisian man from Nice identified as Ramzi A., had a criminal record. Investigators also found a text message in Bouhlel’s phone from Mohamed Oualid on January 10, 2015-roughly a year after attacks on the Charlie Hebdo weekly which spawned the hashtag “I am Charlie” in support of those killed.
People walk past flowers left in tribute at a makeshift memorial to the victims of the Bastille Day truck attack near the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, on Thursday.
At 10.27pm, minutes before the attack started, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel send his last text message, to Ramzi A. It read: “I wanted to tell you that the pistol that you got me yesterday it very good, so I want five from your girlfriend”.
French anti-terrorism prosecutor Francois Molins announced the developments in the investigation during a news conference Thursday.
France’s interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve has acknowledged there was no national police presence at the entrance to the promenade at the time.
The suspects are accused of assisting Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel to prepare the terror attack that claimed lives of 84 people in Nice.
“The necessary, serious preparations had been made for the July 14 festivities.”
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Hollande said that any police “shortfalls” would be carefully looked into, but he defended French authorities against the media attacks, saying that “there is no room for polemics, there is only room for transparency”.
