“4 minutes 17 will have been enough to cause 86 deaths, hundreds of injuries, and how many collateral victims…” begins Advocate General Alexa Dubourg, evoking “the carnage” and “the jihadist signature” wanted on July 14, 2016 by Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel on the Promenade des Anglais at the wheel of a 19-tonne white car. “It was one of the most horrific and deadliest attacks ever committed in France”, underlined his colleague Jean-Michel Bourlès.
After three months of hearing and at the end of a long indictment with three voices, the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) on Tuesday requested sentences ranging from two to fifteen years in prison against the eight accused in the trial of the Nice attack, tried before the Paris Assize Court since September 5.
“No one should be condemned as if he were the direct perpetrator of the attack”
An exhaustive but sometimes tortuous indictment. Undoubtedly because of the extreme diversity of the defendants – five of whom are appearing for offenses against the legislation on weapons – but also because they are concerned about education with regard to the civil parties. “There will be frustrations, it’s inevitable. No one should be condemned as if they were the direct perpetrator of the attack”, thus underlined Alexa Dubourg, recalling that no one “appears for acts of assassination or complicity in these crimes”.
For the three main defendants, the only ones tried for terrorist criminal association, the same sentence of 15 years’ imprisonment was thus requested, but the abandonment of this terrorist qualification required for one of them, Ramzi Arefa, the supplier of the automatic pistol which Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had equipped himself with and used that evening, on the grounds that he “could not know of its radical evolution”.
If “all gravitated around a black sun which sought to kill and which they knew was looking for a weapon”, depicts Jean-Michel Bourlès, only Mohamed Graïeb and Chokri Chafroud “knew his fascination for the Islamic State”. “They were not unaware of his ability to commit acts related to his radical ideology”, he asserts, pointing to “their points of convergence” and their multiple contacts around the truck rented a few days before.
Against the five other defendants, including four Albanians, prosecuted for arms trafficking, the public prosecutor requested sentences of 2 to 10 years in prison. The maximum incurred was requested for Artan Henaj, “the supplier of the weapon” to Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel.
“The very clear intention to do maximum damage”
“Would he have committed his crimes without this weapon? We think not. It was a sine qua non of its passage to the act, ”insists the general counsel Rachel Lecuyer. This was “matured, thought out with the very clear intention of doing maximum damage”, asks his colleague Alexa Dubourg, who returns to “the terrorist nature of the attack” and dismisses “the thesis of madness” . “We are very far from erratic violence, out of control. His incredible violence, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel chooses on whom he exercises it, ”she notes.
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The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office dedicated its opening remarks “to all the victims” of “this absolute tragedy”. To deliver to them “(his) infinite compassion for their suffering”. To recall this “unbearable particularity of the Nice attack” which are “these stolen childhoods and these annihilated families”, recalled Alexa Dubourg.
The Advocate General also addressed the painful subject of organ removals carried out by forensic scientists from the bodies of 14 victims. To admit that the Pnat had “failed” in its legal obligation to inform families. “We are sincerely sorry,” she said.
Defense arguments begin on Wednesday. The verdict is expected next Tuesday.