Attack in Nice: A third man in custody

A third man, close to the suspect arrested on Friday evening, has been taken into police custody during the investigation into the fatal attack in the Nice basilica, a judicial source said on Saturday. The 33-year-old man was present during police searches of the home of the second suspect suspected of having been in contact with the assailant the day before. “We are trying to clarify its role in all this,” said the judicial source.

The second individual, aged 35, was arrested Friday in Nice between 6.30 p.m. and 7 p.m., and taken into police custody. On Thursday, a 47-year-old first suspect was arrested after he was seen alongside the assailant in CCTV footage the day before. He was still in custody on Saturday morning, the judicial source said. Investigators are seeking to determine whether the assailant may have benefited from complicity, including how he obtained the two phones found in a bag containing personal effects. Both laptops are in use.

The attacker who arrived the day before or the day before the attack

According to preliminary evidence, Brahim Issaoui, a 21-year-old Tunisian, arrived in Nice the day before or two days before the knife attack, which left three people dead. On Thursday, at 8:29 a.m., he entered the Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption basilica, in downtown Nice, where he slaughtered a 60-year-old woman, Nadine Devillers, and the sacristan Vincent Loquès, aged 55 years. A 44-year-old Brazilian mother, Simone Barreto Silva, stabbed several times, died at a nearby restaurant where she had taken refuge.

Brahim Issaoui, overpowered by a team of the municipal police who fired at him several times, was taken seriously injured to the Pasteur hospital in Nice. Unconscious, he could not be heard by investigators. Gray areas persist on the course and motivations of the young man, who left the city of Sfax in central Tunisia in mid-September, where he lived with his family.

Smuggled into Europe via the Italian island of Lampedusa on September 20, he is said to have landed on the mainland, in Bari, in southern Italy, on October 9. According to his mother, Brahim Issaoui, motorcycle repairer, had been praying for two and a half years. “He did not go out and communicate with others”. In Tunisia, he had a criminal law record of violence and drugs, according to the Tunisian justice which also opened an investigation.