who was really Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel? What prompted this 31-year-old man to rush into the crowd at the wheel of a 19-tonne truck on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice on the evening of July 14, 2016? Throughout the eighth week of the trial, thehe special assize court in Paris tried to identify the personality and motivations of the terrorist who killed 86 people and injured more than 400 others.
Investigators from the Anti-Terrorism Sub-Directorate (Sdat) detailed, Tuesday, October 25, the result of the investigations carried out on this thirty-something killed by the police on the evening of the attack. The family and relatives of the Tunisian heavyweight driver then took over the helm. All painted the portrait of a brutal and impulsive man, captivated by violence. “This fascination is very old, prior to the facts”underlined for his part an investigator.
For the father of Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, who came specially from Tunisia to testify, his son was a teenager in “aggressive behaviour”with “sudden movements”, lonely and unable to bear frustration. Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel “beat his brothers and sisters”, said the 63-year-old farmer with the white mustache.
Violence seems to have plagued the life of this family living in a rural area of Tunisia. The father has “punished with a slap or a kick” his son, especially “when he flies[ait] Fruits and vegetables” Where “return[ait] late”. “With him more than with the others?”asked the president of the special assize court. “He was the eldest, let’s say”, replied the mother of Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a 58-year-old woman with a scarred face, who spoke after her ex-husband.
Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was in fact the second of a family of ten children, but the first boy. “He wanted to be a sports coach, but dad wanted him to become an engineer”, completed the sister of the terrorist, three and a half years younger than him. “It was tense with dad, they didn’t like each other.”
According to various witnesses, the “crises” of Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel multiplied throughout his youth. One day, he locks his family in the house with chains and padlocks. Another, in 2004, his father noted on returning “a door smashed”, “broken windows”. He takes his son, aged 19 (and therefore a minor at this time in Tunisia) to consult a psychiatrist. The doctor does not make a precise diagnosis, but prescribes an anxiolytic, an antidepressant and an antipsychotic.
According to testimonies, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel only took this treatment for a while, before stopping because of drowsiness caused by the drug. He subsequently always refused to return to the practitioner. Apart from this episode, there is “no objective element of the file in favor of a psychiatric mental pathology” diagnosed, emphasized a general counsel. BMany of those close to Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel have yet mentioned “psychological problems”, notes the Sdat investigator. Three suicide attempts are mentioned in the file, but at the hearing, no one was able to provide any details on this subject.
Once of age, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel moved to Nice at the end of 2007, after married H., one of his first cousins in Tunisia. The couple had three children, the last in August 2015, while they were in the process of a divorce. In France, the violent behavior of the man has not ceased. His criminal record bears the trace of a conviction for violence against a motorist, but he is implicated in four proceedings, including one for domestic violence. “He hits me every day since we got married”denounces his wife in a first complaint filed in 2011. Deemed unfit, she did not come to testify at the trial.
In another complaint, read by the president of the special assize court of Paris, H. says that her husband spilled a glass of wine and urinated on her, before defecating in their bedroom that evening. In shoddy black-and-white images shown in the courtroom on Tuesday, feces and a lacerated teddy bear were seen. “When his wife refused to do the housework, that was his way of reacting. He wanted revenge because he considered that she was not taking care of him”explained to the bar, a former brother-in-law.
Other witnesses completed the terrible portrait of Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel. “My brother was very calm, except when someone did something that went against what he wanted”said his younger sister at the helm.
“I didn’t understand my brother, I felt like he had two personalities.”
The sister of Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlelat the special assize court in Paris
His friend R. went so far as to evoke a man with a character “kindly” and “calm”, met in a gym in 2010. “I agreed to have a drink with him and a friendship was formed”explains this 80-year-old Niçois. “I had power over him, he listened to me with great respect”, developed R., who saw himself as his “mentor”. The two men were lovers “from time to time”, during “about four years”. His entourage at the gym, quoted by the investigator, does not hesitate to qualify Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel ‘”sex obsessed”.
Those who shared the intimacy of the assassin all expressed their incomprehension when it came time to talk about the passage to the act. R. certainly found him changed a few days before the attack. “He had lost a lot of weight. I looked at him and I said to myself, ‘He’s not the same person anymore’.” Other friends have observed reversals. Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel accused one of them of drinking alcohol. He told another to do Ramadan and offered to go to the mosque. A third noticed he was listening to Quran recitations in his car and was blamed “his shorts too short”reported at the hearing the police officer of the Sdat, for whom these elements constitute “weak signals of religiosity”.
Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, who grew up in a traditional Muslim family, but “not fanatical” according to his father, however, showed indifference to Islam so far. “Once he went to pray with my husband without washing”remembered one of her aunts, facing the special assize court in Paris. Could he have been influenced? Several people have mentioned a member of his family “likely to have radicalized him”. The investigators did not identify him and the various testimonies delivered to the bar did not shed light on this point. The association of radicalized individuals during food distributions to refugees was also mentioned at the hearing, without us being able to learn more. The attack was claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group, but investigations have proven that it was an opportunistic statement.
However, from June 29, 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel carried out “daily research on Islam and jihadist terrorism” and consulted in a manner “frantic” videos of IS abuses, investigator says. On his laptop, the police discovered reports on the attack on the Bardo museum in Tunis in 2015, the video of a woman being executed by a bullet in the head, that of tortured children, or images road accidents… There are also many photos in the middle of which pop up shots of the July 14 festivities.
Other photos found at the killer’s home caught the attention of investigators. “He’s someone who used to take selfies,” commented the president of the assize court, by projecting these images where we can see in particular Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, with a smile on his lips, white teeth, and a beard in a well-trimmed necklace. others show it in the company of other people, at the beach or in the café… or with the truck used to perpetrate the attack. In some photos, he is showing the middle fingers. Others are annotated with first names, including that of “Chokri”.
Chokri Chafroud is one of the three defendants in the trial, dismissed for terrorist criminal association. This one poses on a few shots, just like Mohamed Ghraieb. This childhood friend of the terrorist appears free for the same reason. Ramzi Arefa, a 28-year-old Franco-Tunisian, is the third of these defendants. Everyone fidgets in their seats seeing the images projected on the walls.
Why Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel did he write the names of his acquaintances on the pictures? “Do you think it was an error on his part, panic, or a desire for manipulation?”asked the president of the court. “Certainly not panic”assured the policeman of the Sdat, for whom the project of attack was meticulously prepared. “There is a desire on his part that we find the people in question. Nothing is done to hide his activity”developed the investigator, installed behind a plexiglass wall used to preserve his anonymity.
“Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel tried to compromise those around him in this action.”
A SDAT investigatorat the hearing
Is it the expression of a “resentment”, a will to do harm stronger than any jihadist convictions? These are just “hypotheses”, underlined the investigator, recalling that “the analysis of these elements will be made by the court.” The latter will be able to rely on the statements of the eight defendants, who will be questioned in the coming weeks on their links with Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel. Their statements may help complete the puzzle on the personality and motivations of the terrorist.