The man who killed 84 innocent people by driving a truck through a packed crowd at a fireworks display in Nice, France, may have plotted the attack for at least a year and is believed to have had the help of at least five other people, a French official said today.
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Five suspects have been formally charged over the July 14 truck attack in the French Riviera city that killed 84 people.
French police and security forces examine the remains of the delivery truck that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove into a crowd of people on Bastille Day.
In a press conference, the revelation by Paris prosecutor Francois Molins made clear that the attack on Bastille Day was the result of a terrorist organization and that the five suspects now in custody are directly linked to the attack.
Molins said photos on his phone showed he had likely staked out the event in 2015, and initial details of the investigation reveal he had been fascinated with jihad for some time.
French justice officials said the swoop was not directly connected with the attack in Nice.
The accomplices continued to support Lahouaiej Bouhlel up until the day of the attack.
Bouhlel was not known by France’s intelligence services, had never been arrested or questioned for any terrorist activity, Molins said at an earlier presser. People in the wake of the deadly Nice attack on Thursday, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Friday morning declared three days of national morning, to begin on July 16.
According to AFP, Ramzi, Chokri and Oualid were charged with being accomplices to murder by a terror group.
However, Mr Molins said the investigation had confirmed that the attack was premeditated.
Those detained are four men: Ramzi A. and Mohamaed Pualid G. who identified as Franco-Tunisians, Chokri C. who is identified as Tunisian, and an Albanian, Artan.
An Albanian couple suspected of providing Lahouaiej-Bouhlel with a pistol were among them.
One photo in his phone, taken on May 25 previous year, was an article on Captagon, a drug said to be used by some jihadis before attacks.
Dolls and teddy bears are placed at a memorial in a gazebo on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, southern France, Wednesday, July 20, 2016.
“Put 2,000 tons of metal in the truck, f**k the brakes, and I’ll be watching”, says one message sent to Lahouaiej Bouhlel in April. “I am happy they have brought soldiers of Allah to finish the job”.
Speaking from Ireland, French President Francois Hollande said the inquiry was to seek answers about whether security plans were sufficient, but called for calm.
The French Parliament this week extended the state of emergency in place since the November Paris attacks for a fourth time. It gives the police extra powers to carry out searches and to place people under house arrest.
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In a statement, Cazeneuve accused the paper of conspiracy theories and said that several “heroic” national police who killed the attacker after an exchange of fire were stationed further down the promenade.
