CCTV in question

A terrorist posing all smiles in front of the weapon he chose for a mass killing, a 19 ton truck. This photo, he took it himself, a few hours before the attack. On the Promenade des Anglais in Nice (Alpes-Maritimes), between July 11 and 14, 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel will take several selfies, and will be filmed ten times by the city’s cameras, circulating with his truck. Locations without ever being worried, as when we see him park his vehicle on the promenade, while heavy goods vehicles are prohibited there. Or, two hours before the attack.

How did this strange game not arouse suspicion? Incomprehensible for a former gendarmerie colonel, in charge of city security until 2013. “He should have been spotted, he wasn’t.”, laments Benoît Kandel. Another flaw, according to the former gendarme: on the evening of July 14, the entrance to the Promenade des Anglais was closed by simple barriers, and not anti-intrusion concrete blocks, like those used a few days earlier in Nice to securing a football game. An absence of reinforced security all the more incomprehensible since at that time, the authorities knew the risk of an attack committed with a vehicle rushing into the crowd.