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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPolice and academics search Nice attacker’s history for a motive
Jason Burke
Saturday 16 July 2016 19.01 EDT
We know now that Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, who killed 84 people and injured many more on Thursday evening in Nice, was 31, getting divorced and living in a working-class neighbourhood euphemistically described in the French press as mixed. He was an immigrant, as are most of his neighbours. One described him as a blédard, a hick from the old country in his case Tunisia. Taciturn, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel scared the neighbours and was prone to angry outbursts. He beat his wife and was recently convicted of an assault on a motorist. He had a record of petty crime and a possible history of depression, but no known links to radical ideologies or networks ...
Lahouaiej-Bouhlel certainly matches the classic profile of French violent Islamic extremist in many ways though he is a relatively recent arrival rather than born in the country of immigrant parents, as is more usually the case. He was a young, male petty criminal. He was also not devout, all witnesses so far agree. He did not fast during Ramadan, ate pork, drank, and was never seen at any local mosque.
This lack of piety among militants may seem confusing. It is, however, the rule rather than the exception. It was true of the dozen or so French and Belgian young men involved in bombings and shootings earlier this year, and of Mohammed Merah, who committed the first major attack in France in 2012. Other examples beyond France include that of Omar Mateen, who killed 49 in a Florida nightclub last month.
This apparent paradox has prompted a keen debate among experts. The argument has major policy implications. In France, it has been bitter. Olivier Roy, a well-known French scholar currently at the University of Europe in Florence, suggests those drawn into violent activism are already in nihilist, generational revolt. This is why so many are criminals, or marginal. Extremist Islam gives them a cause and frames anger and alienation in the way extremist leftwing ideologies did for some in the 1960s and 1970s. The new militants are thus not victims of brainwashing by cynical and fanatical recruiters. This is the Islamisation of radicalism, Roy says, not the radicalisation of Islam ...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/16/nice-truck-attack-terrorism-profile
struggle4progress
(118,295 posts)PUBLISHED 4 HOURS AGO
NICE (France) ... He "had not been known to the intelligence services because he did not stand out... by being linked with radical Islamic ideology," Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said yesterday ...
A resident of the apartment block where the family had lived until 18 months ago before they split up said Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had an extreme reaction to his wife's request for a divorce after a violent argument.
"He defecated everywhere, he cut up his daughter's teddy bear and slashed the mattress,'' said the man, who asked not to be identified.
"I don't think there was a radicalisation issue. I think there was psychiatric problem," he said ...
http://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/attack-in-nice-attacker-not-linked-to-any-militant-group
struggle4progress
(118,295 posts)Posted: Saturday, July 16, 2016 8:00 am
A Tunisian-born émigré with a record of petty crime was behind the wheel of a truck that barreled into Bastille Day revelers and claimed at least 84 lives over a mile-long path of horror, a police said, as investigators explored possible links to Islamist militant networks ...
French media reported that Bouhlel had no apparent previous links to extremism. But the probe has shifted quickly to determine whether he acted alone or had the support of a network that could be plotting further violence ...
Hollande said authorities were not yet sure whether the attack was perpetrated by an individual or perhaps multiple individuals ...
http://www.phillytrib.com/ap/after-nice-carnage-motive-remains-sketchy/article_8078c642-ee97-5148-bc53-85f4223eb6f5.html
struggle4progress
(118,295 posts)Barney Henderson Rozina Sabur
17 JULY 2016 2:37AM
... ISIL claimed responsibility Saturday for the attack by Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel who used a hired lorry to kill at least 84 people in a rampage during Bastille Day celebrations in Nice.
An Islamic State-run media outlet says the man who drove his truck into a crowd in the French coastal city of Nice is a "soldier" of the group.
The Aamaq news agency on Saturday cited a "security source" as saying the attacker "carried out the operation in response to calls to target the citizens of coalition countries fighting the Islamic State."
French authorities said they were checking the claim ...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/15/nice-terror-attack-on-bastille-day-everything-we-know-so-far-on/
struggle4progress
(118,295 posts)By ANDREW HIGGINS
JULY 15, 2016
NICE, France He lived on the 12th floor of a high rise in a heavily immigrant housing project and was known to his neighbors only as a moody and aggressive oddball. He never went to the local mosque, often grunted in response to greetings of bonjour and sometimes beat his wife until she threw him out ...
Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel appeared not to have left behind any public declaration of his motive or indicated any allegiance to the Islamic State or another extremist group ...
On Saturday morning, the Islamic State said Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel was a soldier for its cause and had carried out the attack to answer the calls for targeting the nationals of countries in the coalition fighting the extremist group in Syria and Iraq. But it remained unclear whether the claim of support was an effort by the Islamic State, also know as ISIS or ISIL, to associate itself with a high-profile attack without having been involved in its planning or having any direct contact with Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel.
He had a history of petty crime, including a six-month suspended sentence for assaulting a motorist last year. But he was never flagged as a potential jihadist radical and, Mr. Molins said, he was completely unknown by intelligence services, both at the national and local levels ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/16/world/europe/a-surly-misfit-with-no-terror-links-turned-a-truck-into-a-tank.html
Albertoo
(2,016 posts)- phone contacts
- money trail
- probable logistical support (where to rent the truck, how to access the Promenade Bld.)
struggle4progress
(118,295 posts)Albertoo
(2,016 posts)Over the past month, she told Reuters, he was calling us every day and he sent us money.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/islamic-state-claims-responsibility-for-france-attack-in-nice/2016/07/16/4327456e-4ab9-11e6-8dac-0c6e4accc5b1_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_nice-515am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
struggle4progress
(118,295 posts)by being linked with radical Islamic ideology," Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said yesterday. If he was a Islamist militant, he must have become radicalised very quickly, Mr Cazeneuve added ...
http://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/attack-in-nice-attacker-not-linked-to-any-militant-group
The Interior Minister did not actually say the man had radicalized quickly: he said that France had not seen any advance evidence of radicalization and added "It seems he became radicalized very quickly"
Albertoo
(2,016 posts)http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/16/nice-terror-attack-truck-driver-who-killed-84-named-as-loner-fre/
struggle4progress
(118,295 posts)radicals. However, an intelligence source cautioned: That could just be a coincidence, given the neighbourhood where he lived. Everyone knows everyone there ...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/16/nice-terror-attack-truck-driver-who-killed-84-named-as-loner-fre/
Albertoo
(2,016 posts)- In phone contact with radical Islamists
- Following one modus operandum recommended by Daesh
- Manages to know where to rent a big truck without the required driving licence
- Beat up individual suddenly finds free cash to send to his family back home*
- Daesh claims attack as that of one of its soldiers
Do you think he could have been an attacker sent by the Dalai Lama?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/16/nice-terror-attack-truck-driver-who-killed-84-named-as-loner-fre/
Yo_Mama
(8,303 posts)"He used to send us small sums of money regularly like most Tunisians working abroad. But then he sent us all that money, it was a fortune."
struggle4progress
(118,295 posts)melman
(7,681 posts)Sure there are.
struggle4progress
(118,295 posts)Yes -- theft, extortion, and dealing are possible
If he wasn't squeamish about driving a truck through a mile of crowd, extortion wouldn't have offended his delicate scruples
Dreamer Tatum
(10,926 posts)It's a well-known hotbed of radicalism, the garment business.
struggle4progress
(118,295 posts)That could actually be a convenient cover occupation for various criminal activities
Albertoo
(2,016 posts)Apparently, the Paris Bataclan attack have made suicide attacks glamorous.
The 'Che Guevara' dream of disenfranchised Muslims.
While it doesn't perfectly illustrate the case of the truck attacker, it probably describes the 'background noise' in the Muslim communities of the poorer suburbs (banlieues).
struggle4progress
(118,295 posts)July 16, 2016 at 6:15 PM EDT
... Today, ISIS claimed responsibility saying the Tunisian man who drove the large truck was one of its soldiers ...
But French authorities have not confirmed the link ...
... ISIS ... statement that they made today that Bouhel had followed their call to attack the citizens of countries that were attacking ISIS.
That is very clearly not the same as saying that they coordinated the attack ...
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/investigators-look-motive-nice-truck-attack/
treestar
(82,383 posts)It is interesting that it is possible that a person can have a Muslim background and be just the same as those other attackers, insane. This looks like it could be possible here.
StraightRazor
(260 posts)Just like when the EgyptAir flight went down and EVERY 'terrorism expert' immediately screeched Terrorism/ISIS.
Oops.
Albertoo
(2,016 posts)it will be possible to invoke a causality relationship with the ideology of group X
Dreamer Tatum
(10,926 posts)He'd be a fire-breathing fundie.
The cognitive dissonance is simply staggering.
Albertoo
(2,016 posts)JI7
(89,252 posts)Dreamer Tatum
(10,926 posts)Would just take a few clicks to settle the matter: clearly not terror-related.
Not like that Christian terrorist in Colorado Springs, anyway. Now THAT was terror.
Bradical79
(4,490 posts)with a violent angry religious group. That's my best guess. I don't know that it's THAT big of a paradox... Most people still want to feel like they belong to some kind of group, and groups like ISIS even offer a twisted form of spiritual redemption with promises of God giving them rewards in the afterlife. France has an abundance of pissed off young people who feel like aliens in their own country. That otherness that being of some kind of Muslim and/or immigrant family background brings gives ISIS and other Islamist militant groups a thread to pull to get new recruits.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)Albertoo
(2,016 posts)Can you please find a nebulous myriad of other possibilities, for fear of offending
one precious, endangered, 1.6Bn believers strong, species of a religion?