What We Know About The Nice, France Attack Suspect

As we reported, an attacker drove a truck into the crowd celebrating Bastille Day for more than a mile along the French Riviera promenade.

Police sources said Bouhlel was not on the watch list of French intelligence services but was known to the police in connection with common crimes such as theft and violence.

It is surprising to note that despite noticing Bouhlel standing for nearly nine hours, the police did not suspect anything unusual or amiss.

Italy, Spain, Germany, Britain and Belgium, all of which are neighbours of France, held separate meetings to review their own security after the Nice attack, which came just after the French had successfully hosted the Euro 2016 football tournament and launched a massive security operation during it.

Lahouaiej-Bouhlel – a resident of Nice – was shot dead by police after the attack in which at least 10 children and teenagers were among the dead.

Life for Bouhlel had in recent months had begun to degenerate for the loner, with his wife filing for divorce, along with his employer recently firing him after falling asleep while at the wheel and crashing into four cars according to France’s Bfmtv.

Authorities were “not aware that he had ever shown a sign of radicalisation”. “I’m still a little shaky”, he said.

Told the man’s cousin, Walid Hamou: ‘Bouhlel was not religious. He stared at us and we avoided him’.

“Going grey, in his thirties, around 35-years-old”. When asked a question he would often not respond.

He was arrested in January for violence with a weapon and in March a judge in Nice gave him a six-month jail sentence, which was suspended, the prosecutor said.

Officials said there have been no claims of responsibility.

Molins said Bouhlel was seen on surveillance video Thursday riding his bike to a rented refrigerated truck that was parked east of Nice.

The Daily Mail reported that although heavy duty lorries are usually banned from roads on national holidays and Sundays, deliveries are exempted.

A 7.65 caliber handgun was found on the attacker, and authorities also found several fake rifles and fake grenades inside the truck, according to BFM-TV.

USA officials confirmed that at least two Americans were killed in the attack, but did not name them.

On one message he said: “Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your auto, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him”.

She said that he was “a handsome man” and likely “pleasing to women”, but was incredibly private. “The goal of terrorists is to instill fear and panic but France is a great country and a great democracy that will not allow itself to be destabilized”, he said in televised remarks from Paris.

And more significantly, Nice was the childhood home of one of France’s most infamous jihadist recruiters, Omar Diaby.