At trial of Nice attack, an accused drowns himself at helm

Walid Ghraieb, a friend of the terrorist, is the first accused of being questioned on Friday. By dint of denying everything, until the absurd, he ended up strengthening the suspicions that hovered over him.

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Rarely we will have seen an accused so badly defending ourselves. It must be said that the situation of Walid Ghraieb is hardly convenient: this 46 -year -old Franco -Tunisian, former night receptionist in a hotel in Nice, is one of the two friends – he prefers the term “relationship” – of the terrorist From the Promenade des Anglais to be tried at the trial of the July 14, 2016 attack in Nice. In his desperate attempt to defend himself, he is not an element on which he did not contradict himself, Friday, November 4, during his interrogation, helping to thicken a little more the halo of suspicions which surrounds his role in this File.

At the end of the tunnel of the testimonies of the civil parties, and after a week devoted to the personality of the terrorist, the special Assize Court of Paris has been looking since Wednesday on the charges chosen against each of the eight accused. Walid Ghraieb was the first to answer questions. By dint of wanting to save himself at all costs, he drowned with method, despite the president’s attempts, Laurent Raviot, to try to bring him back to reason: “We do not understand why you do not want to recognize this trivial element in the file ” ; “I’m not here to get you stuck, but to understand what happened” …

Walid Ghraieb fights against a cloud. The investigation could not establish any evidence of his direct involvement in the attack, but a bundle of clues throws trouble on the role he was able to play in the act of his friend: ten days Before the attack, the terrorist had sent him by text the word “ADA”, a heavy goods vehicle rental agency; On July 11, he invited her to make a trip aboard his truck; On the morning of July 15, finally, the accused filmed, strolling on the Promenade des Anglais that his friend had just transformed into a mass grave.

cloud of indices

The cloud of clues that surrounds the accused also depends on the offense for which he is judged: Walid Ghraieb is not returned for “complicity in assassinations”, the investigation could not establish only He was aware of the attack project perpetrated by Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel. He must answer for his possible participation in an “association of terrorist criminals”, an offense with so nebulous contours that a accused looking for depoting it is irreparably thinking about an insect struggling in a spider web.

The week had started rather well. Wednesday, his mother, bookseller, and his sister, French teacher, had come from Tunisia to paint a portrait of a secular and open Muslim family, attached to the heritage of former Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba. “We really like France in the family, said the sister. We all vote against the Islamists. It is unthinkable that my brother has changed in a rigorous practice.”

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/Media reports.