TRIAL 14-JULY. The trial for the attack of July 14, 2016 in Nice must open on September 5 and for more than two months at the special assize court in Paris. Eight people are sent before the judges.
[Mis à jour le 26 juillet à 16h49] It is a new historic trial which will open on September 5 at the special assize court in Paris: that for the attack of July 14, 2016 in Nice. Six years after the terrorist attack on the Promenade des Anglais, eight people will be tried, including three for “criminal terrorist association”. If the trial is an event, it will not make it possible to judge the author of the attack, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, shot dead by the police on the evening of the tragedy. The 31-year-old Tunisian had, aboard a 19-tonne truck, drove into the crowd of 30,000 people gathered to admire the National Day fireworks, killing 86 people and injuring 400 in his path.
Even without the presence of the terrorist and responsible for the attack, the trial of theNice attack, also known as July 14, is eagerly awaited by the victims, their families and the more than 856 people or associations who have filed civil suits. “I think that the moment of the trial is part of the reconstruction. It is a stage in our repair”, explained Hager Ben Aouissi, president of the association Life for Nice on European 1 July 15, 2022. The legal meeting is also awaited and carefully prepared by the lawyers involved in the case, including those members of the 14-7 Avocats collective. All hope “to represent [au mieux leurs] clients who will not all come to Paris, coordinate interventions at the hearing to make them as efficient as possible, provide as much information as possible, etc. We have to be up to it, we owe it to the event and to the civil parties”, as Me Olivia Chalus-Pénochet and Me Sophie Hebert-Marchal indicated to West France June 29.
Where is the trial of the Nice attack taking place?
It is far from Nice, a city devastated by the terrorist attack of July 14, 2016, that justice will be done on this tragedy. The trial of the July 14 attack will take place in Paris, in the salle des pas perdus of the courthouse on the Ile de la Cité, which has been converted into the special assize court of Paris. This courtroom with a capacity of 500 people has already hosted another historic trial, that of the November 13 attacks. The eight defendants will take place in the box reserved for them before the assembly of magistrates and civil parties. Fourteen other rooms where the debates will be broadcast will make it possible to accommodate more people, in particular the victims, their families and the civil parties who will have made the trip. With these premises, more than 2,000 people will be able to be accommodated and attend the hearings.
The trial of the July 14 attack broadcast in Nice
Not all the victims and civil parties will make the trip to Paris and participate in the hearings of the Nice attack trial. They will however be able to follow the testimonies live thanks to the retransmission of the hearings and the debates in a “dedicated room” assured the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti on July 14, 2022, day of commemoration of the tragedy and tribute to the victims, to Nice morning. West France evoked the Palais des Congrès in Nice, on June 29.
Regarding the retransmission, the Keeper of the Seals added that the entire trial can be followed by the civil parties who request it on a secure web radio. The device was put in place for the first time during the trial of the November 13 attacks, but this time the retransmission “will be [également] accessible from abroad” and provided with a translation. A detail that is very important for this case in which some of the 86 deceased people were of 19 different nationalities.
Who are the defendants in the Nice attack trial?
They are eight defendants to be returned to the special assize court of Paris but the author of the terrorist attack will be absent. Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, driver of the truck and responsible for the terrorist attack was shot dead by the security forces on the evening of the attack, on July 14, 2016. The fact remains that the investigation made it possible to identify eight people having had a role in preparing the attack. They are seven men and a woman, all members of the killer’s entourage or intermediaries involved in the arms trafficking in which Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel took part.
The names of the three main defendants are known: Chokri Chafroud, Ramzi Arefa and Mohamed Ghraieb. All three will be tried for “criminal terrorist association”. Several civil parties demanded that they appear for “complicity” in the crimes committed by Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel. A request to which justice could not accede for lack of evidence on this famous complicity. The investigations did not make it possible to determine whether the three men were aware of the planned attack. As for the other five defendants, they will be tried for common law offenses.
Was the Nice attack a terrorist attack?
Only a few hours after the attack in Nice, on July 14, 2016, François Hollande, then President of the Republic, judged that “the terrorist character [de l’attaque] cannot be denied”. Occurring a few months after the attacks of November 13, 2015, the attack on the Promenade des Anglais was quickly linked to terrorism. Hypothesis reinforced by the claim of the attack by the Islamic State (IS) on its Al-Bayan radio station. IS called Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel a “soldier [menant] the operation in response to calls to target nationals of coalition countries”.
The Paris public prosecutor’s office with national jurisdiction for terrorism had been seized of the case and entrusted the investigations to the investigators of the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police (DCPJ) and the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI). The first elements had not made it possible to establish a link between the killer and a terrorist group but had found evidence of the radicalization of the thirties, in particular by the presence of photos of actions and the flag of the IS on his computer. personal. Research had also found traces of contact between Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel and personalities known to the DGSI as radical Islamists according to the Telegram. The perpetrator of the attack was not known to the French or Tunisian intelligence services before the 2016 attack, according to the Guardian.
Bernard Cazeneuve, Minister of the Interior in 2016, described Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlelqui as “[semblant] radicalized very quickly” and evoked “an attack of a new type” committed by “individuals sensitive to the message of Daesh (Arabic acronym for the Islamic State) who engage in extremely violent actions without necessarily having participated in combat, without necessarily having been trained”. The trial of the Nice attack will return to the terrorist nature of the attack of July 14, 2016, in particular via the judgment of the three main defendants prosecuted for “criminal terrorist association”.