The Telegraph reports: he terrorist behind the Bastille Day atrocity was radicalised within months and sent his Tunisian family £84,000 just days before the massacre, it was claimed on Saturday.
Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s brother in Tunisia described receiving the fortune in cash as police swooped to arrest five suspected associates across the city of Nice
The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said the attacker “appears to have become radicalised very quickly” as one neighbour of his estranged wife added: “Mohamed only started visiting a mosque in April.”
Investigators examining Bouhlel’s phone records found evidence that he was in contact with known Islamic radicals.
However, an intelligence source cautioned: “That could just be a coincidence, given the neighbourhood where he lived. Everyone knows everyone there. He seems to have known people who knew Omar Diaby (a known local Islamist believed to be linked with the Al Nusra group close to Al Qaeda).”
Relatives have reportedly claimed Bouhlel, in the days before the attack, persuaded friends to smuggle the bundles of cash back to his family in their hometown of Msaken, Tunisia.
His brother Jaber also said he had not seen his brother for several years and the money had come as a complete surprise. [Continue reading…]
The Guardian reports: The Tunisian delivery driver who killed 84 people on Thursday when he drove a truck at high-speed into a crowd watching Bastille Day fireworks in Nice sent a text message just before the attack about his supply of weapons.
Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, 31, wrote of his “satisfaction at having obtained a 7.65mm pistol” and discussed “the supply of other weapons,” a police source confirmed to AFP. Two replica assault rifles and a dummy grenade were also found in the truck.
It also emerged that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel took pictures of himself at the wheel of the truck before the fatal attack, and shared them by text message. Over 200 investigators are working on identifying the recipients of the messages. [Continue reading…]
