On June 20, 2016, less than a month before the carnage, a police officer interviewed Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel as part of a complaint for domestic violence filed twenty-two months earlier by his ex-wife.
The terrorist had not been taken into custody despite two complaints and the fact "that he had been sentenced in March 2016 to six months in prison suspended for acts of violence on the public highway".
Heard by videoconference and visibly very uncomfortable, the official could not give "any answer" on what the president of the special assize court in Paris described as "a sloppy hearing" and even "an opportunity failed”.
"If he had been taken into custody that day, all of this might not have happened."
Thursday morning, in front of the Acropolis convention center in Nice, where the trial of the July 14 attack is broadcast live from Paris, Kimberley, one of the civil parties seated on the edge of a planter, lights a cigarette .
She has just heard the testimony of a policeman from Nice "who could have changed everything", she breathes.
On June 20, 2016, Joël C. interviewed Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel as part of a complaint for domestic violence filed twenty-two months earlier by his ex-wife.
He came out free.
June 20, 2016. Less than a month before the carnage.
Less than a month before his murderous terrorist run on the Promenade des Anglais.
Heard by videoconference and visibly very uncomfortable, the police officer was unable to give "no answer" to what the president of the special assize court in Paris described as "a sloppy hearing" and even " a missed opportunity”.
“A somewhat cavalier way of dealing with a procedure”
“Twenty-two minutes to hear a person accused of serious violence against his companion and who failed to appear on several summonses [in 2014, then in 2016], I find that it is a somewhat cavalier way of dealing with a procedure “, in particular curried Laurent Raviot after having recalled the terms of the complaint.
Hajer K. recounts there in particular when Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel urinated on him, “defecated on the floor of [their] room” or when he “stabbed the teddy bear of [their] daughter in the heart”.
"He regularly throws objects in my face, constantly threatens me and my children," she explains.
He addresses us in these terms: “When I return, if I find you here, I will kill you, you and your daughters”.
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Our file on the Nice attack
"Why he was not placed in police custody, knowing that his wife had already filed a complaint for the first time in 2011, and that he had been sentenced in March 2016 to a six-month suspended prison sentence for acts of violence on the public highway”, asks the court.
Arms crossed, biting his lip most of the time, Joël C. only recalls that he "replaced a colleague" and that he "was not aware of these facts".
"Why didn't you take his fingerprints?"
Why didn't you check the files and his antecedents, ”continues Laurent Raviot without getting an answer.
“Denouncing violence, without anything happening”
The policeman says he has "no memory of the hearing", but explains immediately afterwards: "he had behaved normally, otherwise I would have placed him in custody".
If this procedure had been ordered on June 20, 2016, the future terrorist "would have been the subject of a medical examination which would have given some indications on his state of health", and therefore on "psychiatric problems", recalls Laurent Raviot.
Asked about the practices of the police in cases of violence against a spouse, Joël C. indicates that "currently, it is a systematic placement in police custody", but that at the time, "it was at the 'assessment of the police officer'.
Joël C. had already, at the time, 30 years of experience.
And "in 2016, domestic violence, we were already talking about it a lot, about these women who denounced violence, without anything happening, and who were then murdered by their spouse", supports Laurent Raviot.
So for him, this free hearing, completed in twenty-two minutes, "retrospectively, we say to ourselves that it's a missed opportunity", "when we know that a month later, he will kill 86 people and cause hundreds of wounded”.
The policeman remains motionless.
The gaze fixed towards the camera.
As when a lawyer, on the benches of the civil parties, evokes his upcoming retirement, planned in four months: “it is welcome, it is only my own observation”, launches Me Philippe Soussi.
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