PARIS (Reuters) – The trial of the ram truck attack on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, which left 86 dead and some 450 injured in the middle of fireworks on July 14, 2016, will open in Paris on Monday, in the absence of its author, shot dead by the police, and of an alleged accomplice.
The trial, of which all the hearings will be broadcast on video in Nice, will be held for a little over two months in the hall of the Paris courthouse where the trial of the attacks of November 13, 2015 in Saint -Denis and Paris.
This is the last major legal meeting in a grueling series of trials of the wave of Islamist-inspired attacks that hit France in the mid-2010s. In the absence most of the time of the perpetrators and of the sponsors of these attacks, these cathartic moments will not have made it possible to completely turn this bloody page in the country’s history.
Many questions are once again likely to remain unanswered during the trial of the Nice attack, for which eight people (seven men and one woman) were sent back to the special assize court.
None of them is accused of having played a leading role in the attack led by Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, the 31-year-old Tunisian who caused death on the Promenade des Anglais at the wheel of a truck. 19 tons.
The three main defendants – Mohamed Ghraieb, Chokri Chafroud and Ramzi Arefa – are being prosecuted for “criminal terrorist association” and as such risk 30 years of criminal imprisonment.
RELATIVES OR ACCOMPLICE?
They are suspected of having “contributed to the preparation (of) the passage to the criminal act” of Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, but their complicity was not retained by the national anti-terrorist prosecution (Pnat), the investigation not having made it possible to determine whether they were aware of the planned attack.
According to the prosecutors, these suspects were however very close to the Tunisian truck driver and knew of his adherence to “the ideology of armed jihad” and “his fascination for violent acts”.
The other defendants are being prosecuted for common law offences. They are suspected of having been involved in arms trafficking which allowed the assailant claiming to be from the Islamic State (IS) group, which claimed responsibility for the attack on July 16, 2016, to obtain a pistol.
The trial could take a political turn during the appearances of the former President of the Republic François Hollande, and his former Minister of the Interior, Bernard Cazeneuve, whom the lawyers for the civil parties intend to question about the security – insufficient in their eyes – the festivities of July 14, 2016, only eight months after the attacks of November 13 which left 130 dead and plunged the country into a stupor.
In addition to the Paris courthouse, on the Ile de la Cité, the approximately 850 civil parties already constituted – others could come forward during the trial – will be able to follow all the hearings in a specially equipped room on the Acropolis, in Nice.
The trial is scheduled to end on November 15.
(Written by Tangi Salaün, edited by Sophie Louet)