Before the resumption of the hearings in the trial of the Nice attacks, Wednesday, November 2, return to the debates of last week, entirely devoted to the author of the attack, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, shot dead by the police after having killed 86 people driving his 19 ton. Despite the many testimonies heard over five days, the killer’s personality and motivations remain unclear.
Was he mad? Unbalanced? Radicalized? This is a delicate exercise to which the court gave itself up: to dissect, a posteriori, the personality of Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, to try to understand his murderous act. To do this, investigators, his parents, his relatives and several of his connections took the stand. They painted the portrait of a multi-faceted man, sometimes described as ” depressive », « introvert », « violent sadist ” Where ” paranoid “.
His relatives first tell of a harsh childhood and adolescence in a modest family in Msaken, Tunisia. Mohamed works hard with animals, develops complexes. “ He felt despised by the other children, because he was not well dressed, smelled bad “says his cousin.
The young man draws self-loathing from it – “ he hated himself “, insists his aunt – and resentment towards his family, especially his father. ” Mohamed and him did not like each other points out her sister, especially since the slaps and kicks are commonplace, as recognized by the patriarch who asserts at the bar: “ everyone hits their children “.
A life path marked by violence
Violence, first received, but soon committed, punctuates the life of Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel. Violent with his comrades, with his siblings, Mohamed cannot stand the frustration. At the slightest annoyance, he hits and he breaks “, underlines his father. A refused motorcycle and he locks up his family with chain and padlock. His father is opposed to his becoming a sports coach, and here he is, at 19, breaking down doors and windows with a knife. This will earn him an appointment with the psychiatrist.
But Mohamed quickly stops the anxiolytics and antidepressants prescribed and refuses to return to them: the psychiatric diagnosis will therefore never be made. For his father, Mohamed is not mad ” but ” weird “, an adjective taken up by others to describe it. ” He was only good for muscle “, tackles in summary his parent, who also insists on a point which is consensus among his relatives: “ Mohamed was never interested in religion “.
A man with two faces
In 2007, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel left for France with his wife. Those who knew him in Nice portray a man with two faces. Tails, he’s a man complex », obsessed with his appearance and sex. He is running ” gyms and salsa clubs. “ A heavy flirty “according to two of his auditioned mistresses, but rather” calm », « introvert », « unsure of himself “. So much so, underlines one of them, that when she discovers his crime, she finds it difficult to believe it, he is so “ inconceivable that this kind and reserved man (had) become the criminal of the Promenade des Anglais “.
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Neither does Roger. saw nothing coming “. This octogenarian, who describes himself as a “mentor” and “ a father figure for Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, also confides that he was her lover for four years. His ” momo he said, was “ charming and affable “, even if he admits to having detected in certain glances ” fixed and empty “, a “ lack of empathy “. Other “ oddity – again this word – noted by Roger, the future killer often passed himself off as a Jew. He said “ hate arabs “. “ I think he was ashamed of himself “says the old man.
On the face side, it is towards his wife that Lahouaiej Bouhlel will show the full extent of his dark side. This woman, so traumatized that she could not testify, described to the police in 2014 daily violence, the manifestations of which clearly indicate psychological problems. Beyond beatings and an insatiable sexual appetite, her husband defecates in their room, urinates on her, stabs the comforter of one of his daughters whom he calls ” my shit and death threat. “ He loved evil […]. He was a monster, the devil took inspiration from him sums up this woman. Faced with this troubled profile, questions about his motivations remain.
The hypothesis of a suicide transformed into a mass killing
As an investigator points out, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s research on the internet illustrates his fascination with violence of all kinds (deadly accidents, scenes of torture, zoophilic images, etc.) long before any interest in the videos of the Islamic State group.
It was only a few weeks before the attack that the future killer began to consult jihadist propaganda. Furthermore, it will not record any messages of allegiance to the terrorist organization, whose claim a posteriori is also referred to as “ opportunistic by the floor. ” The will to harm precedes the will to harm in the name of religion “analyzes the anti-terrorist policeman, who insists on another aspect” unique of this file: the terrorist left a considerable number of clues which incriminate the defendants today. To the extent that “ the idea we can have is that he deliberately tried to compromise those around him », Considers the investigator. But again, why?
“ He did this to get people talking about him “says Roger. “ If he was mentally ill he could kill himself, but why kill all these people “, still torments his sister at the helm. One of his mistresses, who found him depressive before the attack, advances a theory: Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel would have perpetrated this massacre in the line of the germanwings pilot who, in 2015, committed suicide, taking all the passengers on the plane with him.
A hypothesis which greatly interests the lawyers of one of the defendants, Chokri Chafroud, one of the defendants implicated by photos and messages left in evidence by the killer: “ This element questions us in a very important way, especially since there is a material similarity in the facts with a person in charge of public transport who commits criminal acts “Insists Florian François-Jacquemin, sketching a line of defense for his client.
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