BBC Online :
French prosecutors have confirmed that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel was behind the wheel of the lorry that ploughed into people celebrating Bastille Day on the seafront in Nice on Thursday, killing scores of people.
The 31-year-old Tunisian delivery man was identified by his fingerprints after his driver’s licence, mobile phone and credit card were found inside the vehicle by police who shot him dead.
Lahouaiej Bouhlel was totally unknown to the intelligence services, but Prime Minister Manuel Valls has said he was a “terrorist without doubt linked to radical Islamism in one way or another”.
Tunisian security sources told BBC Arabic that Lahouaiej Bouhlel was from the northern town of Msaken, about 10km (6 miles) outside the coastal city of Sousse.
He had relatives who still lived there and visited Tunisia frequently, the last time eight months ago, the sources added. Lahouaiej Bouhlel was married with three children, although he no longer lived with his wife, who was detained for questioning by police on Friday. A woman who knows the family told the BBC that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was thrown out of their home in the Le Ray area of Nice more than a year ago after allegedly beating his wife.
Several neighbours in the four-storey block of flats in the Abattoirs area where he subsequently moved described him as “quiet” and a “loner” who did not even respond to their greetings.
He had a van parked nearby and would often be seen climbing the stairs to his first-floor flat, carrying his bike.
He also did not seem overtly religious. Locals said he was often seen drinking beer and never attended the small mosque near his block of flats.
Anan, who lived on the ground floor, said she was suspicious of him because he was “a good-looking man who kept giving my two daughters the eye”.
One woman recalled that he was nice to her and helped her all the time. But, she said, his behaviour was sometimes “strange”. He once asked to rent her mailbox and that when she refused he had called her “nasty”, she added. When she learnt of the attack, she immediately wondered if he might have been involved.
On Friday morning, investigators and forensic experts raided his flat and seized a telephone and computer.
Prosecutor Francois Molins told a news conference that Lahouaiej Bouhlel had been in trouble with police between 2010 and 2016 for threatening behaviour, violence and petty theft.
French prosecutors have confirmed that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel was behind the wheel of the lorry that ploughed into people celebrating Bastille Day on the seafront in Nice on Thursday, killing scores of people.
The 31-year-old Tunisian delivery man was identified by his fingerprints after his driver’s licence, mobile phone and credit card were found inside the vehicle by police who shot him dead.
Lahouaiej Bouhlel was totally unknown to the intelligence services, but Prime Minister Manuel Valls has said he was a “terrorist without doubt linked to radical Islamism in one way or another”.
Tunisian security sources told BBC Arabic that Lahouaiej Bouhlel was from the northern town of Msaken, about 10km (6 miles) outside the coastal city of Sousse.
He had relatives who still lived there and visited Tunisia frequently, the last time eight months ago, the sources added. Lahouaiej Bouhlel was married with three children, although he no longer lived with his wife, who was detained for questioning by police on Friday. A woman who knows the family told the BBC that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was thrown out of their home in the Le Ray area of Nice more than a year ago after allegedly beating his wife.
Several neighbours in the four-storey block of flats in the Abattoirs area where he subsequently moved described him as “quiet” and a “loner” who did not even respond to their greetings.
He had a van parked nearby and would often be seen climbing the stairs to his first-floor flat, carrying his bike.
He also did not seem overtly religious. Locals said he was often seen drinking beer and never attended the small mosque near his block of flats.
Anan, who lived on the ground floor, said she was suspicious of him because he was “a good-looking man who kept giving my two daughters the eye”.
One woman recalled that he was nice to her and helped her all the time. But, she said, his behaviour was sometimes “strange”. He once asked to rent her mailbox and that when she refused he had called her “nasty”, she added. When she learnt of the attack, she immediately wondered if he might have been involved.
On Friday morning, investigators and forensic experts raided his flat and seized a telephone and computer.
Prosecutor Francois Molins told a news conference that Lahouaiej Bouhlel had been in trouble with police between 2010 and 2016 for threatening behaviour, violence and petty theft.
