Attacker in Nice Showed Online Fascination With Islamic State French prosecutors say Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel rehearsed parts of the truck attack that killed 84 people By William Horobin and Stacy Meichtry

Posted By on July 19th, 2016

http://www.wsj.com/articles/french-police-step-up-investigation-into-bastille-day-truck-attack-1468847127

PARIS—The man who killed 84 people in Nice was a violent drinker and drug taker with an “unbridled sex life” who developed a fascination with Islamist State and other terrorist propaganda, prosecutors said as they deepened their probe into whether a broader network fostered his radicalization.

François Molins, the chief Paris prosecutor overseeing the investigation into the Bastille Day attack, said Monday that police haven’t found any evidence that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel explicitly pledged allegiance to Islamic State or had links to any people associated with the Sunni Muslim militant group.

However, the prosecutor painted a picture of a man who underwent a rapid transformation in the weeks leading up the massacre and became suddenly enthralled with extremist messages and ultra-violent images.

Data recovered from Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s computer included pictures of militants draped in Islamic State flags and corpses as well as photos of Osama bin Laden and Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the head of an al Qaeda-aligned group called Murabitun. His computer also turned up searches for “horrible car accidents” and “shock videos,” Mr. Molins said.

“What we pulled from his computer shows a certain recent interest for the radical jihadist movement,” he said.

The speed of Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s radicalization, French authorities say, raises the specter that France is up against a new breed of terrorist that intelligence agencies can do little to detect. Recent attacks in Paris and Brussels were carried out by Islamic State militants who spent time in the terror group’s stronghold in northern Syria.

Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a Tunisian who moved to France after marrying his cousin, a French national, wasn’t on any watch lists and wasn’t known to have made any trips to Islamic State territory.

The attacker’s family, however, had recently grown concerned after Lahouaiej Bouhlel befriended an Algerian man who was known for subscribing to an ultra-orthodox strain of Islam known as salafism, said Sadek Bouhlel, an uncle of the attacker who lives in his Tunisian hometown of Msaken. CONTINUE T SITE

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