PARIS – A Tunisian man on Monday on 2020 on terrorist charges over the murder of three in a Basilica in Nice, one of several attacks linked to Islamic extremism in the French Riviera city of Nice on Monday was brought to trial in.
The assailant, who was shot dead and seriously injured by police, says he doesn’t remember anything. Brahim Aouissaoui, now 25, is the only person on the dock when the trial was held, with no accomplices or sponsors identified.
The attack was the third in less than two months due to Islamic extremists, prompting the government to raise its security warning to the highest level. France came while he was holding trial for a 2015 attack on Charlie Hebd, a satirical newspaper that published a portrait of the founder of Islam. France at the time defended the cartoon and faced anger from many Muslims around the world due to its policies against Islamic extremism.
France is currently on high alert, especially on the threat of domestic extremists on its online platform.
When Monday’s minutes began in Paris, Aouissaoui spoke through a translator. He is facing charges of murdering a terrorist and attempted murder of a terrorist, and faces life sentence if convicted.
On October 29, 2020, Ouisaoui is said to have killed worshippers Nadine Vincent (age 60) and Simone Barrett, a 44-year-old French and Brazilian woman.
Related Stories
The officers fired at the assailants as he rushed at them and wielded a knife. Seriously injured, Aouissaoui underwent two surgeries and intensive care.
He repeatedly told investigators he had no recollection and had nothing to say. He claims his parents are dead when they are not actually, and says he doesn’t recognize himself in CCTV footage of him entering the cathedral.
Expert psychiatrists and neurologists determined he was not suffering from total memory loss. “The systematic and opportunistic nature of lost memories is part of the defense system and refused to work with judicial authorities,” they said, according to an investigation document seen by the Associated Press.
They described him to those who had experienced an age of addiction, and a period of “strickenness and asceticism,” and then to “being passed through a period of radical commitment, then to the actions of terrorists.”
Due to behavioral issues in custody, Aouissaoui has been in and out of prisons for five people.
Samia Mctuff, a lawyer representing the church worker’s family, described the suspect as “a radical and indoctrinated Salafis, close to an al-Qaeda paper, who congratulated him on his actions.”
According to research documents, aouissaoui is believed to have left Tunisia by boat on the night of September 18th-19th, 2020. He then went to Lampedusa, Italy, one of the major European gateways for immigration, before being quarantined. On October 9th he arrived in Bali, southern Italy, where he was notified of his obligation to leave the country. However, he returned to Sicily and worked to pay for the train ticket to Rome.
According to investigators who investigated his posts on social networks, Aouissaoui was aware of the threat to France by media close to the al-Qaeda terrorist groups after the launch of the Charlie Hebd attack.
He repeatedly scouted the basilica before the attack, and investigators said it had been planned for several weeks.
