NICE ATTACK. Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel is the terrorist behind the attack in Nice on July 14, 2016. He was shot dead by the police a few minutes after his attack. Who was he ?
[Mis à jour le 5 septembre 2022 à 16h06] Who is Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel? This name is known as that of the terrorist author of theNice attack perpetrated on July 14, 2016. The man died within minutes of his terrorist attack, shot dead by two police officers. The testimonies of his relatives, the accounts of the attack and the judicial inquiry made it possible to paint a portrait of the assailant from Nice and to describe a particularly violent man, who had become radicalized a few months before the attack and therefore before his death. The killer also suffered from psychiatric disorders according to his father. In 2022, six years after his attack on the Promenade des Anglais, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, is the great absentee from the trial of the Nice attack. Yet the hearings will make it a point of honor to scrutinize the personality of the man and to detail his plan and the organization of his attack.
Who is Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the author of the Nice attack?
The identity of the perpetrator of the Nice attack was quickly confirmed by the police and Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel was recognized as the terrorist. His identity papers were in the vehicle which drove into the crowd causing hundreds of injuries and 86 deaths in its path. The terrorist was a Tunisian born in Msaken (Sousse) and who had settled in Nice in 2006. Father of three children and married, he was in the process of divorce and had couple problems, in particular because of domestic violence denounced by his wife. woman. Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel was of a violent nature and had been sentenced in 2016 to six months in prison suspended for “willful violence with a weapon”. On the other hand, the man was not known to the intelligence services and did not appear in the file of people on file S for radicalization. To the investigators, the terrorist had been described as violent, obsessed with sex, paranoid and under psychiatric care by his family, his ex-wife had even spoken of a “monster” but appeared as a “lonely” and “silent” man to his neighbors.
“Attack in Nice: the portrait of the killer”
Was Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel radicalized?
Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel was not a religious man, never went to the mosque and his behavior was contrary to the precepts of Islam. His ex-wife had told investigators that the man “[mangeait] pork, [buvait] alcohol” and was a “sickly flirty”, “very heavy with women, perverse”, adding: “I have never seen him pray”. But a few months before the attack, the man had completely seen his conduct and frequented mosques, read the Koran very regularly and was engulfed in a rather radical ideology as evidenced by his “criticism of the clothes worn by his friends or the fact that they listen to music” or the adoption of “a distant attitude towards women” noted by the judges.
It was only after a few days that the investigation revealed the signs of the radicalization of Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel. The man kept photos and videos of a terrorist nature, sometimes of allegiance to Daesh such as a photo of the first head of Aqmi, the branch of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or of Salah Abdeslam, the terrorist of 13-November. The research history of the author of the Nice attack also showed recent research on terrorist attacks, in particular assaults involving road accidents.
Still, the killer of the Nice attack seemed to have radicalized independently. No trace of contact between Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel and the Islamic State had been found. This suggests that despite the claim of the attack by Daesh on July 18, 2016, the attack is an isolated initiative.