For the verdict in the Nice terror trial: “There is a risk of a miscarriage of justice” Corona wave rolls: rush to hospitals in China

Expectations of the process were high, probably too high. How could it be otherwise with such a terrible act: when the fireworks for the 2016 French national holiday in Nice were over, a 19-tonne truck rumbled along the beach promenade, deliberately driving past passers-by.

86 people died on the famous Promenade des Anglais, 400 were injured and many more traumatized. Covered by surveillance cameras, Nice has not recovered from the horror to this day.

By early September, 850 co-plaintiffs had registered. Since the murderer Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel from Tunisia was no longer alive, they at least wanted to know from the accomplices how and why this rampage had happened in the year after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan.

The process provided only a very limited response. The eight suspects – mostly Tunisian acquaintances and Albanian arms suppliers, including the occasional prostitute – all denied knowing anything about the killer’s terrorist intentions. Four defendants had never even seen Lahouaiej-Bouhlel and others had helped rent a truck.

The case catches the prosecutor by surprise

Three defendants are charged with “membership in a terrorist organization”. This fact is partly based on a single text message that the perpetrator had sent them a few minutes before the rampage. Absurdly, he wrote down their own names and addresses with such precision that the detectives were baffled.

Some assume that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, in his sadistic perversion, tried to blacken acquaintances at the last minute so as not to be seen as the sole perpetrator.

Lawyer William Bourdon warned in his closing speech about the “risk of a miscarriage of justice”: his client Mohamed Ghraieb is considered a terrorist, even though there is no indication of the slightest radicalization. He was accused of taking a “selfie” in the white truck three days before the attack. The gunman’s Tunisian childhood friend did not know what Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had rented the vehicle for. The public prosecutor, on the other hand, assumes a terrorist objective and demands 15 years in prison for Ghraieb.

The newspaper “Le Monde” commented because of the unclear evidence: “The logic of the prosecution eludes you.” Lawyers and media express suspicion in various ways: could the public prosecutor’s office, out of consideration for the victims and the horror they have experienced, do anything other than decide on ‘terrorism’, even if individual defendants were mere arms dealers from the red light district? in Nice?

Doubts about IS authorship

The lorry driver’s terrorist intentions, on the other hand, are out of the question, even if the nature of his madness is unclear. The violent drug addict had visited a mosque or recited from the Quran a few weeks before the disaster. He had no contact with the IS militia, which took over authorship unusually late.

It is generally expected that the jury, made up of judges, will follow the requests of the prosecution. It is inconceivable that such a crime would end with an acquittal, if only for the accused whose complicity has not been proven.

Plaintiffs are not satisfied with this. She does not understand that the French central government did not handle the process in Nice, but in faraway Paris. She also misses a second trial – on whether the police could have prevented the truck from entering the beach promenade. This aspect was suppressed during the trial, as was the question of why organs were removed from some victims without the next of kin being aware of this.

All in all, the four months of negotiations leave the impression of an impossible process. Legally, it was undoubtedly essential, if only as talk therapy for hundreds of family members who were able or willing to speak in public for the first time. However, the trial could not replace, let alone settle, the political debate.