Last night French security chiefs were meeting at the Elysee Palace for talks about the atrocity, the third mass casualty attack against France in 18 months.
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He said the family took Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel to a doctor who prescribed medication to counter his depression.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has helped clear up one of the questions hanging over the Nice attack: How did the truck driver who killed 84 people on the city’s seaside boulevard manage to get the vehicle there in the first place?
The Islamic State group, in claiming the attack Saturday, said he was a “soldier” who had responded to “calls to target nations of coalition states that are fighting (IS)”.
France, whose revolution commemorated on Bastille Day has inspired countless movements for independence in many countries including the Philippines, has had an inordinate share of grievous attacks since a year ago, starting with the raid in January on the editorial office of satirical publication Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket.
France is observing three days of national mourning in homage to the victims – although that hasn’t stopped politicians from sniping at each other over who bore responsibility for the failing to stop the attack.
“From 2002 to 2004, he had problems that caused a nervous breakdown”.
Back in Tunisia, Bouhlel’s father said his son was prone to violent episodes during which “he broke everything he found around him”.
“We are also shocked”, he said, adding that he had not seen his son since he left for France but was not entirely sure when this was.
“He didn’t pray, he didn’t fast, he drank alcohol and even used drugs”, he said.
In an open letter published on the Nice Matin newspaper’s website, regional council President Christian Estrosi – a member of France’s opposition Republicans – described the country’s current leadership as “incapable”. “I had to protect my face from flying debris”, he said.
“I don’t know why”.
“I never saw him at the mosque”, said the caretaker of an apartment building as he sat in a restaurant next to the mosque, who asked not to be named.
Three men were taken into custody on Friday and two on Saturday. Prosecutor Francois Molins said Bouhlel was “completely unknown” and was not on the terrorism radar.
He got a six-month suspended jail sentence in March over a violent confrontation after a auto accident in January.
In a TV interview on Friday night, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that Lahouaiej Bouhlel “was likely a terrorist”, but police had not yet figured out if he had received financial support and training from Islamist organizations, or had simply subscribed to the ideology.
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He lost his wife in the attack and was hunting Saturday for his four-year-old son, Kylan. “We just had time to throw the children”, said the 42-year-old Frenchman.
