He’s a Tunisian-born petty criminal with a violent streak — but nobody saw this coming.
Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who killed at least 84 Bastille Day
revelers and wounded hundreds more in Thursday night’s truck rampage in
Nice, France, was described Friday as a depressed loner but an unlikely
jihadist.
Bouhlel — who cops shot dead in the large truck’s cab — was not on
any terror watchlists, was opposed to traditional Muslim values and had
been mentally unstable for years.
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His father, Mathir Bouhlel, told reporters that he brought the killer
to a mental hospital in Tuisia in 2004 because he suffered fits during
which he would “break everything.”
He was released with a list of prescriptions to take. One of the
drugs was Haldol, a powerful anti-psychotic used for those suffering
from such mental diseases as schizophrenia and acute psychosis, he said.
Mathir said by the time his son moved to France, he was fine. “Nobody could tell anything was wrong.”
But that’s not what his neighbors in Nice said.
Scores of those who knew him said not only was he anxious, he was disrespectful.
“He was not religious. He did not go to the mosque, he did not pray,
he did not observe Ramadan,” Walid Hamou, a cousin of Bouhlel’s
estranged wife, Hajer Khalfallah, told the Daily Mail.
“He was not a Muslim, he was a s- -t,” Hamou added, claiming that
Bouhlel, 31, drank booze, ate pork and took drugs — all forbidden by
Islam.
“He beat his wife, my cousin — he was a nasty piece of work,” he told the paper.
The couple had three kids.
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Another neighbor told France 24 TV that Bouhlel’s wife left him about 18 months ago because of the beatings.
His reaction was very strange, the neighbor said.
“When his wife left, he defecated on the floor, punched his kid’s teddy bears and ripped the mattresses,” the neighbor recalled.
French prosecutor François Molins confirmed that Bouhlel was a
delivery driver who had had brushes with the law since 2010. He was
arrested in January for violence with a weapon in a road-rage incident
and sentenced in March to six months in prison.
“There was an altercation between him and another driver, and he hurled a wooden pallet at the man,” French Justice Minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas told Reuters.
Although his sentence was suspended, he was required to contact police once a week, which he did.
Bouhlel had recently lost his delivery-driver job after falling asleep at the wheel and crashing into several vehicles.
He had gotten his truck license only in the last two years.
Tunisian security sources said Bouhlel had last visited his hometown
of Msaken, 75 miles south of Tunis, four years ago, and was not known to
have held radical Islamic views.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls called him a “terrorist” and speculated authorities would find ties to radical Islam.
Molins, a Paris anti-terrorism prosecutor, said that Bouhlel was
“completely unknown” to intelligence officials but that his attack in
the southern French city was “exactly in line with” calls from jihadist
groups to shed blood.
Valls said Bouhlel was “probably linked to radical Islam in one way
or another,” although Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve cautioned it
was too early to confirm that.
French authorities are analyzing surveillance video in which Bouhlel
is seen riding a bicycle to rent the refrigerated truck he turned into a
killing machine.
Bouhlel was seen putting his bike in the back of the truck and
getting in the cab before plowing it into the crowd on the Promenade des
Anglais.
He was identified from fingerprints and a driver’s license found in the truck. Authorities also seized papers and his cellphone.
On Facebook, Bouhlel spoke mainly of women and troubles he has had with them.
Residents in Bouhlel’s working-class Nice neighborhood of Abattoirs described him as a handsome but creepy loner.
“I would say he was someone who was pleasing to women,” one neighbor told Reuters. “But he was frightening.
He didn’t have a frightening face, but . . . a look. He would stare at the children a lot.”
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