NICE – In 2010, the then mayor of Italian origin Christian Estrosi Nice he created the first ‘urban supervision center “of France, an operating room with 70 cops who control the monitor connected to 915 surveillance cameras – one for every 360 inhabitants, a record – scattered in the city. A powerful and unique system across the country, which over the years has served to seize the thief in the act some more, but not to stop a truck White 19 tonne vehicle on the crowd of 14 July.
On the other hand, to massacre now completed, the cameras help at least to reconstruct what happened. He tells it, in the room on the second floor of the Palace of Justice in Nice, the anti-terrorism prosecutor of Paris, François Molins, hero despite the new France bloodied by the attacks. Charlie Hebdo on is he to keep citizens on the progress of investigations: a lifetime of self-effacing man, and a senile notoriety that never would have chosen.
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Attack in Nice, the photo story of the night? Nightmare in 50 shots
The truck was hired by the killer Monday, July 11 in Saint Laurent de Var, and should have been returned Wednesday 13. Instead, the cameras frame it that day still in Auriol in Eastern district of Nice, where it remains until the next night, that of the national day and fireworks on the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. Thirty thousand people gathered on the Promenade des Anglais, one of the most beautiful and iconic of the French Riviera, to watch the fireworks. As always on these occasions, many children.
At 21:34 the terrorist Lahouaiej Bouhlel Mohamed, 31, a Tunisian living in Nice with a residence permit, arrives by bicycle, charging the giant practically empty containers, and starts driving towards the west of the city.
Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel commit the most atrocious carnage in the contemporary history of the French Riviera city, and its profile for once is not that apparent good guy. Him the neighbors do not say, as it did with Mohamed Merah in Toulouse for example, that “always said hello,” or was so kind. No, Bouhlel is a jerk. He beats his wife, who had come to find the strength to leave him despite the three children, aggravating depression and the difficulty of being in the world.
a type shady, but did not seem to ever really radicalized: continued to like most women of fundamentalist mosques. Bouhlel worked as a driver and as a courier, March 26 had been sentenced to six months’ probation for assault after a car accident, but had never done a day in prison. It was an old acquaintance of the police for theft and violence, but totally unknown to the secret services. Unlike the terrorists of the attacks in January and 13 November, Bouhlel was not filed ‘S’, was not considered a danger to national security. common criminal, it has gone unnoticed to the officials authorized to identify possible jihadists.
However, around the 22 of July 14, a witness saw him driving the truck while making strange test maneuvers. Laicia Baroi is in the car with her partner and is going towards the Promenade des Anglais, a bit ‘late, to see the fireworks. They stop at an intersection and go see next to them the white truck. “It was the terrorist truck, I’m sure, was the same that we saw on television. It’s been next to us at around 22, and was advancing on the road so bizarre. The driver accelerated and braked, accelerated and braked … We thought it was really strange. Then we continued in the direction of the Promenade, while he went to the airport. There must have turned around. ”
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Attack in Nice, photos of the massacre symbol
And indeed, around 22:45, Mohamed Bouhlel arrives at the beginning of the Promenade des Anglais, at ‘height of the house number 11. Find a police barrier, and the testimonies diverge. According to the M6 television network, the agents stop him, he explains that with his refrigerated truck must deliver ice creams to further local, and let it pass. Others take a less sensational version, according to which the terrorist would have just passed the barrier going up on the sidewalk, and therefore beginning to kill.
The Tir accelerates, reaches 90 km per hour for a beast of 19 tons launched among passersby in the city is a crazy speed, and Mohamed Bouhlel shall endeavor to make as many victims as possible, giving the steering shots to hit the local audience, who are strolling in fireworks over now.
Richard Gutjahr, German, stood on the balcony of a hotel. He saw the Tir on the crowd, and a scooter that was trying to reach him. The driver of the scooter has tried to pass to stop it, then she joined him, he even tried to cling to the door, but fell and ended up under the wheels of trucks.
always accurate prosecutor Molins says that the race continued for almost two kilometers, up to number 147. There are those who are saved by jumping below, on the pebble beach. Many are blown away like ninepins: this is the recurring metaphor in the story of the witnesses. Others were crushed under the wheels, they are the most mangled bodies. The terrorist had a 7.65 caliber pistol and shot the window, arrived at the Negresco hotel was confronted by three police officers but could continue killing for another 300 meters before stopping more or less at the Palais de la mediterrannée. “It was right before me – tells the witness Nader -, a man tried to talk to him to get him to stop. He seemed nervous, there was a girl under the wheels and was crushed. The terrorist is back to shoot but the police managed to kill him, his head was sticking out the window. ”
Here come back again useful famous camcorders. Christian Estrosi in the meantime is no longer mayor, he won for Républicains Sarkozy regional in December and is president of the PACA (Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur). His chief of staff, Anthony Borré, is back in the ‘urban supervision center “for watching movies. It is said that between the time when the truck arrives on the Promenade and one in which the driver was shot down by the police, do not spend more than 45 seconds. “As you stop a 19-ton Tir launched 90 hour? You can not do anything”.
But there are those who disagree. Henri Guaino, mate Estrosi party, former Sarkozy adviser (he was the man who wrote the speeches as president) and candidate in the upcoming primary right, yesterday offered his recipe: “It would be enough to arm the police with a bazooka the entrance to the Promenade, and a rocket would destroy the Tir. ” Senior members of the French political class now propose to use rocket launchers in the crowd. But the Guaino sentence is not even the most surreal moment of one of the most bizarre days that France has experienced in recent years.
A few meters from the Palais Mediterrannée, where even yesterday morning the bodies were lying covered by towels and sometimes the tablecloths of restaurants, beach resorts hotel Beau Rivage and Castel were full of people enjoying the sun and bathed. A sign of moral collapse, according to some, strength and reaction to terrorism according to others. But there is no doubt that summer, the sun, Nice, and especially the new and frightening habit of the attacks, they removed the tragedy and sense of absolute horror felt in Paris after Charlie Hebdo, the kosher supermarket, 13 November and the Bataclan .
According to the provisional budget provided by the prosecutor Molins on the Promenade were killed 84 people, 202 were injured, 52 of them seriously, among them 25 are in intensive care. The inhabitants of Nice and tourists lay roses, cards and soft toys according to a ritual unfortunately consolidated, but also sprouting selfie from Tir white background. Hollande proclaimed three days of national mourning, but in the meantime tourists shirtless and retirees are pulled by eager face, they want their European rimpadronirsi Florida.
Molins prosecutor, meanwhile, continues its investigation. It has yet to determine if indeed Mohamed Bouhlel acted alone, or at least an accomplice helped him. An analysis of the phone found in the cab of Tir, it seems that Bouhlel had only called contacts in France (and not in Syria and Iraq). The 31 year old divorced and misogynist was depressed but Molins holds the point: he acted performing exactly invitations pronounced by ISIS. It is the most deranged, and tragically efficient, Islamic terrorists.
@Stef_Montefiori
July 16, 2016 (amendment July 16, 2016 | 17:42)
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