The Bastille Day massacre in Nice was a “premeditated, prepared and planned” attack, French prosecutors have said.

Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had grown a beard in the eight days before he carried out the attack and told friends “the significance of the beard is religious”, prosecutor François Molins told a press conference.

Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had not previously shown any sign of being religious, and “ate pork, drank alcohol, took drugs and had a promiscuous sex life”, Molins said, outlining evidence gathered by police.

One witness told detectives that during a discussion about portrayals of Islamic State (Isis) decapitations online, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had replied: “I am used to that,” Molins said.

Another told police that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel “couldn’t understand why Isis couldn’t claim its own territory” and others quizzed by detectives, including his estranged wife, spoke of his “violent behaviour”, Molins said.

Investigators had found no proof of any “allegiance or any direct link” to Islamic State or other terrorist organisations, according to Molins. However, Lahouaiej-Boulel’s computer contained “very violent” images from radical Islamic sites and links to jihadi websites, as well as articles about the Bastille Day fireworks display in Nice, the recent nightclub attack in Orlando, shootings in Dallas, the killing of two police officers in Paris suburb Magnanville, and research into Osama bin Laden and the Algerian terrorist leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

Molins said the attack could be defined “terrorism” as described by French law.

Earlier, Manuel Valls, the French prime minister, was booed before and after a minute’s silence in Nice for victims of the Bastille Day attack. There were shouts of “Murderers!” and “Resign!” as Valls and two other ministers left the seafront, where a huge crowd had gathered to remember the 84 people mown down by the truck driver, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel. There were also placards in the crowd calling for the French president, François Hollande, to resign.

Molins confirmed that 84 people had been killed and 74 others remained in hospital. Twenty eight of these people are in intensive care, of whom 19 have life threatening injuries, he said.

Police and medical experts are struggling to identify all of the victims. So far they have put names to 71 of them and 52 burial certificates have been issued. The first body was returned to their family on Monday morning. An “urgent identification procedure” has been put in place to get victims’ remains returned to their families as soon as possible.

The attacker’s computer records showed a “sure and recent interest for radical jihadist movements”, Molins said, adding that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had also consulted articles on fatal accidents including a report from Nice-Matin newspaper headlined: “Man drives his car into a restaurant terrace.”



“Investigators have established the premeditated nature of this act,” Molins told journalists.

The terms “horrible accident” and “terrible fatal accident” and “shocking video, not for sensitive souls” were in the computer search engine.

Documents and images on Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’s phone showed he had visited the Promenade des Anglais on 12 July, two days before the attack, and taken several photographs including selfies.

On 7 July, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had researched the Qu’ran on his computer as well as religious songs.

He picked up the lorry used to carry out the massacre on 8 July at 8.30am. He was due to return it on 11 July and left a guarantee cheque for €1,600. In the three days before the attack he went to the Promenade des Anglais several times.

Six people remain in police custody and are being interviewed over their role in any “logistical support, including the providing of arms” to the attacker. A text message sent by Lahouaiej-Bouhlel just minutes before the attack mentioned the acquisition of a handgun.

Molins said investigators were examining the “correspondence and communications” of Lahouaiej-Bouhlel in the run up to the attack.



Three days of national mourning in France have been overshadowed by an intensifying debate about whether the government has done enough to respond to terrorism. On Saturday, Isis claimed responsibility for inspiring the attack, and said Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was one of its followers. But France’s interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said links between the attacker and “terrorist networks … have not yet been established by the investigation”.

Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was shot dead after deliberately driving a 19-tonne truck through a crowd of people at a Bastille Day fireworks display on Nice seafront. The attack came eight months after Isis terrorists killed 130 people across Paris, and 18 months after three days of terror at Charlie Hebdo magazine and a Jewish supermarket left 17 dead.

Hours after the Nice attack, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Front National, said France had done “absolutely nothing” to counter Islamic extremists. She also called for a war against Islamic fundamentalism and said Cazeneuve should resign.

Cazeneuve said such remarks were a “shameful” breach of the three-day period of national mourning. Without mentioning names, he said: “Certain members of the political class have not respected the mourning period. Arguments broke out right away, which personally saddens and shocks me.”