BREAKING NEWS, Foreign
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WITNESSES describe terror and chaos after armed man drove through crowds celebrating national day. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has said that although he cannot confirm the attacker’s motives, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel “is a terrorist probably linked to radical Islam one way or another”.
Still, the prime minister told France 2 he had no doubt that the crime was terrorism. “It is a terrorist act and we shall see what the links there are with terrorist organizations.”
He added that the death toll will probably increase – at last count 52 people remained in critical care, including 25 people on life support. Authorities have so far counted 202 people injured in all.
Valls added a warning that more attacks could follow Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’s example, but that France would not be deterred:“I am convinced we will win the war against terrorism and radical Islam.”
Far more cautious was French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who told broadcaster TF1 that broadcaster TF1 was “not known to intelligence services for activities linked to radical Islam”.
Asked whether he could confirm a link to jihadism, he said: “No”. Neighbors of Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel have described the killer as a “frightening man” who kept to himself but showed no signs of radicalization, Reuters reports.
While a history of threats, violence and theft had caused him several run-ins with the law previously, Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Nice resident born in Tunisia, was not on a watch list of French intelligence services as a suspected militant.
He was convicted for the first time in March this year, French justice minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas said. “There was an altercation between him and another driver and he hurled a wooden pallet at the man,” Urvoas told reporters.
As it was his first conviction, Bouhlel was given a six-month suspended sentence and had to contact police once a week, which he did, Urvoas added. He had three children but lived separately from his wife who was taken into police custody on Friday, prosecutor Francois Molins said.
Tunisian security sources told Reuters Bouhlel had last visited M’saken four years ago. They also said they were not aware of Bouhlel holding radical or Islamist views, saying he had a French residence permit for the past 10 years without obtaining French nationality.
Neighbours in the residential neighbourhood in northern Nice where Bouhlel lived said he had a tense personality and did not mingle with others. “I would say he was someone who was pleasing to women,” said neighbour Hanan, standing in the lobby of the apartment building where Bouhlel lived. “But he was frightening. He didn’t have a frightening face, but … a look. He would stare at the children a lot,” he added.
A former neighbour in Bouhlel’s hometown of M’saken, about 120km (75 miles) south of Tunis, told Reuters he had left for France in 2005, after getting married, and had worked as a driver there.
His home town of M’saken is about 10 km (six miles) outside the coastal city of Sousse, where a gunman killed 38 people, mostly British holidaymakers, on a beach a year ago.
Relatives and neighbours in Msaken said Bouhlel was sporty and had shown no sign of being radicalised, including when he last returned for the wedding of a sister four years ago.
Bouhlel’s brother Jabeur said he still doubted whether his sibling was the attacker. “Why would my brother do something like this?” he told Reuters, adding: “We’ve been calling him since yesterday evening but he’s not responding.”
Earnest says the US will give the “strongest support” to France and the investigation into the attack. “There are significant capabilities that we have to support them and obviously we will assist them,” he says.
A reporter asks about whether recent terror attacks outside the Middle East have at all changed the White House’s thinking about its strategy in the region – secretary of state John Kerry called Syria the world’s greatest “incubator” for terror earlier this week.
Earnest says the calculus has not changed. “The ultimate solution is not a military one. We can certainly apply significant military pressure and commit significant military resources,” he says, “but the root cause of all of this has been the failed political leadership of Bashar al-Assad.”
The attack is only going “to energize” international military campaigns against terrorism, he adds. Earnest again qualifies that very little is known about what motivated the killer in Nice. “Whether or not this person had ties to Isil, the president is committed to making sure we do everything possible to protect the American people.”
Earnest stresses the dangers of “lone wolf” attacks, saying “the threat we are facing now is different from core al-Qaida”. A reporter asks again about whether Barack Obama believes the US is at war. “The president has essentially declared that the US is ‘at war’ with terrorist organizations such as Isil.”
But Earnest stresses that the White House does not consider the US at odds with any religion or civilization. “We are not at war with Islam, we are at war with a terrorist organization that attacked us, that perverts Islam to try to win recruitment to its cause.”
He’s again asked about people who are radicalized online, as “it’s very difficult to interrupt, to disrupt, attacks that are plotted and acted by just one person. “There’s a whole lot more that we need to learn about this incident,” he says.
The White House spokesman continues to argue that European nations must improve their intelligence sharing and security agencies – although French police have not yet found signs of radicalization in the Nice attack.
“Just to speak bluntly about this, the previous attacks in Paris in November, I think illustrated this vulnerability best,” Earnest says. “The plotters of the attack were in Belgium but the attack was in France.”
He says this “indicates the cross-border nature of this threat”. Earnest then argues that it’s actually because the US and its allies are winning territory away from Isis in Syria and Iraq that terror attacks have increased outside the Middle East.
“There are some in the White House who are aware of the risks involved in the progress against Isil,” he says, using another name for Islamic State. “We know that there is some evolution in the direction that Isil is giving to potential recruits.”
“In some cases aren’t even directed by Isil but rather are radicalized by viewing their propaganda online.” He admits: “I can’t speak to the Nice case” because it’s too soon to know what motivated the killer.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest says that Barack Obama has called François Hollande to “relay his condolences to the people of France on behalf of the American people”.
He adds that “the United States and France have made important progress in enhancing our security relationship” in the last year. He says the secretary of defense and the office of the director of national intelligence succeeded in working with the French to create a better “information-sharing relationship”.
The president’s top national security adviser, Lisa Monaco, traveled to France and also worked on a new security deal with her counterpart. Earnest does not get into specifics, saying simple that the arrangement will help identify threats and prevent attacks.
“There is certain expertise that the United States has,” he says, and the secretary of homeland security, Jeh Johnson, has shared some of those techniques with French counterparts. Information sharing among European countries needs to be enhanced,” he goes on, arguing that this will in turn improve US security.
A reporter asks him about whether Obama believes the US is at war with terrorism. Earnest says that the president has long said that terrorists declared war on the US with the attack of September 11 2001. “We’ve been at war ever since,” Earnest says. “And we’ve made progress.”
He says that the deaths of top al-Qaida leaders and the recent retreats of Isis are evidence that the US and western nations are succeeding against terrorism. Then he turns it to Congress, which has not yet passed a resolution – though not a declaration of war – that would sanction increased military action against Isis and other groups. “This is the worst possible time for leaders or American leaders to suggest that Americans should start turning on each other. That’s exactly what the terrorists want us to do.” – theguardian
— Jul 25, 2016 @ 01:00 GMT
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