The office of French prosecutor Francois Molins in Paris now reports that the driver of the truck that would kill 84 people on a Nice beachfront on the country’s heralded Bastille Day was plotting the horrific attack months in advance.
Thursday night [July 21, 2016], five people were given preliminary terrorism charges for their suspected parts in aiding Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel in France’s third mass-casualty attack in just over 18 months.
Those detained are four men: Ramzi A. and Mohamaed Pualid G. who identified as Franco-Tunisians, Chokri C. who is identified as Tunisian, and an Albanian, Artan. The fifth suspect is a French-Albanian woman named Enkeldja. Bouhlel was killed by police on Nice’s Promenade des Anglais following his deadly rampage.
Pieces of evidence of their involvement included text messages, over 1,000 phone calls, and a gruesome video of the attack scene found on the phone of one of the four men. This same man also sent text messages found on a phone seized at Bouhlel’s that read: “I’m not Charlie. I am happy. They have brought in the soldiers of Allah to finish the job.”
The text was sent just three days after the January 2015 terror attack on the Paris-based satirical publication Charlie.
According Molins, Bouhlel could have been preparing for this as early as May 2015, as a photo on his phone taken on May 25, 2015 was a snap of an article on Captagon, a drug used by jihadis prior to executing their attacks.
The Islamic State terrorist group previously claimed responsibility for the attack. However, authorities say there is not yet any sign of their involvement.
Since, the attack the National Assembly has extended the nation’s state of emergency for six more months, a measure that had been implemented following the November 13 Paris attacks that claimed the lives of 130 people–another attack claimed by the Islamic State.
