Was the Nice Attacker Really a Jihadist?

[Darrelteni]

Those who knew the attacker said he had a history of violence and ignored basic Muslim rules.
Two days after the devastating attack in Nice, which killed 84 people and injured hundreds, a muddied picture has emerged of the man who mounted the assault—with still no firm idea yet of whether
Those who knew the attacker said he had a history of violence and ignored basic Muslim rules
Two days after the devastating attack in Nice, which killed 84 people and injured hundreds, a muddied picture has emerged of the man who mounted the assault—with still no firm idea yet of whether he was a terrorist at all.
On Saturday, Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Bastille Day attack, trumpeting the truck driver Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel as an ISIS “soldier” who barreled his heavy-duty vehicle through a crowd packing the seafront Promenade Des Anglais during the traditional fireworks display on Thursday night. ISIS claimed in a tweet he had struck in retaliation for air war against it in Syria and Iraq, in which France is heavily involved.
FRANCE-ATTACK-NICE
AFP/Getty Images
This image obtained by AFP from a French police source on July 15, 2016, shows a reproduction of the picture on the residence permit of Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel.
But Bouhlel’s acquaintances reject that version, and describe the man they knew as troubled and violent, with no attachment at all to his Islamic faith.
In interviews on Friday and Saturday, old neighbors and longtime acquaintances of Bouhlel—who was killed by police on Thursday night—paint a picture of a volatile loose cannon with a history of violence, who ignored basic Muslim rules and never attended a mosque.
“He was not a Muslim,” says Walid Hamou, who said he was a close friend of Bouhlel’s wife since her childhood, and had seen a lot of Bouhlel since his marriage a decade ago; “He drank, he ate pork, he danced, he dated lots of women,” Hamou said, sitting in the stairwell of his apartment building in the northern part of Nice on Saturday morning. “He didn’t do Ramadan. He did not pray.”

[debxbem]

The question of whether Bouhlel was a violent troublemaker or an Islamic jihadist is key to French officials. Investigators are trying to determine what motivated Bouhlel, how he carried out the attack, and how police and intelligence services missed the planning for it. It is the third mass-casualty attack in 18 months in France, after the Charlie Hebdo attack in January 2015, and the Paris attacks last November, which prompted President Fran?ois Hollande to impose a state of emergency. While the two Paris attacks were clearly linked to terror groups, until the ISIS claim on Twitter on Saturday, there was nothing tying Bouhlel to any broader network or beliefs.
On Friday the Paris prosecutor Fran?ois Molins, who is overseeing the investigation, told reporters in Nice that Bouhlel had had previous run-ins with police for assault and theft, and earlier this year was given a suspended sentence for an altercation with a driver. Still, Molins said, “there were no red flags for radicalization,” and as such was “completely unknown to both France’s domestic and foreign intelligence officials,” whose name is not in the country’s “S file” of suspected terrorists.
In the first hours after the attack, top French officials seemed divided over whether the Nice killings was a terror attack or not. Prime Minister Manuel Valls—a vociferous proponent of tough action against Islamists—quickly declared it terrorism. But the Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Bouhlel had no known link with terror groups.

[DCaulfiel]

you need to learn to clean up your threads

[DennisEn]

So much this. You copy-pasted unnecessary and irrelevant stuff.

[Djonchbib]

Got rid of pointless stuff.