France fell silent on Monday for the victims of the Nice truck attack, but the mourning was overshadowed by politicians tearing into each other over the massacre.
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The government has sought to fend off criticism, assuring that security at the Bastille Day event was high and scrambling to reassure citizens about their safety. He said a review of Bouhlel’s computer and phone showed online searches relating to IS, other jihadi groups and violent images.
Bouhlel’s rapid radicalization has puzzled investigators.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the picture emerging during questioning of scores of friends and relatives was of someone who “seemed to have been radicalized very quickly”.
A source close to the investigation told AFP that Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian, sent a text message just before the attack in which he “expresses satisfaction at having obtained a 7.65mm pistol and discusses the supply of other weapons”. He said he learned about the Algerian from extended family members who live in Nice.
Dr. Raj Persaud, a consultant psychiatrist and professor at London’s Gresham College, said Bouhlel’s path toward violent extremism might have been longer than people around him noticed. They claimed he was not a devout Muslim and could not have been an extremist who Islamic State (IS) described as one of its “soldiers”. “But that was just what crystallized his beliefs, a lot of the huge transformation had already occurred in the background”, he said.
Sadok is devastated by his nephew’s act, and doesn’t want him buried in Msaken.
“He made more than 80 families grieve, and stained the reputation of our town and our country”, he said.
Numerous dead and injured were children watching a fireworks display with their families. Officials said about 85 remained hospitalized Sunday, with 18 of them, including one child, in critical condition.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls was booed as he signed a book of condolence at the memorial service.
Ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is competing in a November primary for the ticket to run as presidential candidate for France’s mainstream center-right parties, said overnight Hollande’s government had failed to do all it could.
“It’s awful to say but we need a stronger prime minister with laws against radicalism”. Our enemies don’t have no taboos, no borders, no principles.
A source said: “He had been in contact with them on a number of occasions”.
The centre-right opposition leader called for any foreign nationals with links to radical Islam to be expelled from France.
Cazeneuve hit back Monday, listing a series of laws and extra police forces created under Hollande’s presidency “to face a threat that France wasn’t prepared for” when he took over from Sarkozy in 2012.
Defense Minister Jean-Yves le Drian said operations would continue in liaison with the Interior Ministry to “eliminate this cancer that is Daesh”, using the alternative name for the so-called “Islamic State” (IS) group.
Uncertainty and speculation have swirled over the extent to which the Syria- and Iraq-based Islamic State terrorist group, also known as ISIS and ISIL, was involved.
But according to an opinion poll published Monday, by the Figaro newspaper, 67 percent of French people do not trust president Hollande to fight terrorism.
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Angela Charlton reported from Paris.
