The investigation continues after the attack in the Notre-Dame de l'Assomption basilica in Nice, with the new arrests of two men aged 25 and 63, bringing the number of people in police custody to six, we learned Sunday, November 1, from a judicial source.
The two men were arrested late Saturday afternoon at the home of an individual arrested a few hours earlier, around 3 p.m., in Grasse (Alpes-Maritimes), said this source.
The latter, a 29-year-old Tunisian national, is suspected of having rubbed shoulders with the terrorist.
Three other suspects were still in police custody on Sunday: a 47-year-old man, arrested Thursday evening after being seen alongside the attacker on CCTV footage the day before the attack, and a 35-year-old man arrested Friday in Nice for having been in contact with the terrorist.
The cousin of the second suspect, 33, who was present at his home during a police search, was also arrested.
The assailant, a 21-year-old Tunisian, seriously wounded by gunshot wounds by a municipal police patrol, could not be heard by investigators.
At 8:29 a.m. on Thursday, he entered the Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption basilica in the city center, 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 in a nearby restaurant where she had taken refuge.
Cooperation with the Tunisian authorities
According to a source close to the investigation, the terrorist arrived in Nice on Tuesday and was spotted by CCTV cameras near the basilica the day before the incident.
"It is still much too early to know if he benefited from complicity, what were his motivations for coming to France and when this idea germinated in him," another source close to the matter told AFP.
"The continuation of the analysis" of the two telephones found in his business and the "Tunisian side investigation" will be "determining", added this source.
The Tunisian head of government, Hichem Mechichi, called on his ministers of the interior and justice to cooperate fully with the French authorities in the investigation opened by the national anti-terrorism prosecution.
The assailant, who had a criminal record of common law - violence and drugs - had left the city of Sfax, in the center of the country, in mid-September, where he lived with his family.
Arrived illegally in Europe by the Italian island of Lampedusa on September 20, he would have landed on the continent, in Bari, in southern Italy, on October 9.
With AFP
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