Mohamed Salmene Lahouaiej-Bouhlel (; Muḥammad Laḥwiyyij-Būhlāl; 3 January 1985 – 14 July 2016) was a Tunisian terrorist living in France who carried out the 2016 Nice truck attack, in which he drove a truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, hitting 520 people, killing 86 and injuring another 434. Immediately after the attack, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was shot dead by responding French police officers.
Life
Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was born in M'saken, Tunisia, a small town about outside the coastal city of Sousse. According to police reports, he had a French residency permit and moved to Nice in 2005, where he worked as a delivery-truck driver. He trained in martial arts, frequented salsa night clubs, and had an "unbridled sex life". Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was married, and had three children, but was in the process of divorce. He was reported to have had financial difficulties and to have worked as a driver, acquiring a truck permit less than a year before the attack. In January 2016, he fell asleep at the wheel of a van, and was subsequently fired.
His parents are divorced. His father, who lives in the family's native town, told an international news agency that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel suffered from depression, drank alcohol and was a drug user: "From 2002 to 2004, he had problems that caused a nervous breakdown. He would become angry and he shouted ... he would break anything he saw in front of him." Lahouaiej-Bouhlel's sister Rabeb said that his family handed over documents to the police showing that he had been seeing psychologists for several years. His father and his younger brother insisted that the attack "had nothing to do with religion", stating that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel did not pray and never observed the holy month of Ramadan. His brother claimed that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel did not know people, never sent his family presents, and never said hello. He married a French-Tunisian cousin, living in Nice, with whom he had three children. According to his wife's lawyer, he was repeatedly reported for domestic violence and the couple separated.
The Times of India described Lahouaiej-Bouhlel as "mentally unstable", with a tumultuous personal life, which included drug use and consumption of violent online content. Police examination of his phone revealed what Sky News described as a "string" of relationships with both men and women, including an affair with a 73-year-old man.
In the days before the attack, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel let his beard grow and told people "the meaning of this beard is religious." French authorities stated that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel showed a passion for religion only recently; "Mohamed only started visiting a mosque in April," a witness stated. French investigator François Molins stated "Bouhlel had expressed support for the Islamic State."
Molins also found that from 1 July, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel made more or less daily Internet searches for verses of the Quran and "nasheeds". He also researched the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Fitr. Investigators found photos of dead bodies and images linked to radical Islamism on his computer, including the flag of the Islamic State; the cover of an issue of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had been attacked by gunmen in January 2015; and photos of Osama bin Laden and Algerian jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar. He also told friends he did not understand why IS could not hold territory and showed them a video of a beheading on his mobile phone. In response to their shock, he said he was "used to it". In addition, he had searched the Internet for the terms "terrible mortal accidents", "horrible mortal accidents" and "shocking video, not for sensitive souls" and consulted news articles on fatal accidents, including on 1 January 2016 an article or a photo from a local newspaper about a car incident with the caption: "He deliberately crashes onto the terrace of a restaurant".
According to media reports, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was known to police for five prior criminal offenses, notably regarding armed violence. On 27 January 2016 he was put on probation for attacking a motorist with a wooden pallet after a traffic accident. He was convicted on 24 March 2016 and given a six-month suspended sentence on charges of violence with a weapon. Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was last arrested less than a month before the attack after a traffic accident in which he had been asleep at the wheel, and he remained subject to judicial supervision. He was, however, not registered as a national security risk (fiche "S") with French authorities.
Reports say that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel often visited Tunisia, saying the last time he did so was eight months prior to the attack.