He is one of the three main defendants in the Nice attack trial.

"Chokri Chafroud should not be the expiatory victim" of this trial, pleaded, Friday, December 9, at the trial of the Nice attack, the lawyers of this 43-year-old Tunisian, friend of the killer of the Promenade des Anglais, who never found the right words to defend himself.

“He has to come out,” asked Me Chloé Arnoux, one of his advisers, in a vibrant argument, the last of the defense lawyers, who moved even on the benches of the civil parties.

"He has been in detention for six years because the other (Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, editor's note) wrote false things. He did nothing. To acquit him would be neither a scandal nor a shame but the triumph of the judicial virtue", pleaded his other counsel, Me Florian François-Jacquemin.

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Friend of Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a Tunisian national from Nice who killed 86 people driving a ram truck on the Promenade des Anglais on July 14, 2016, Chokri Chafroud is being prosecuted for terrorist criminal association (AMT) and incurs 20 years of criminal imprisonment.

The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor's Office (Pnat) demanded 15 years' imprisonment against him while acknowledging that the facts of which he is accused were "less incriminating" than those alleged against Ramzi Arefa, another accused prosecuted for AMT, who admitted having provided a gun to the killer.

Friend of the killer certainly but what did he know of the murderous plans of his compatriot, shot dead by the police at the end of his mad dash?

Nothing or almost nothing, replied his lawyers in substance.

"Chokri Chafroud did not provide a weapon, he did not help him rent a truck, he certainly got on July 12 in the truck that was used for the attack, but it was not to make a tracking because the route taken (...) was neither in the same direction, nor in the same place" as the route of the fateful evening of July 14, insisted Me François-Jacquemin.

Verdict on December 13 

Coming from a rural family in southern Tunisia, Chokri Chafroud left school at the age of 11.

After passing through Italy, he settled illegally in Nice in the summer of 2015 where he lived "like a tramp".

It was there, at the end of 2015, that he met Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel.

He returned to Tunisia at the beginning of 2016, continued to exchange with him via social networks.

He will return to Nice in the spring.

During the hearing, an expert had noted that his intelligence was "in the lower average".

"Chokri Chafroud, I'm sorry for him, but he's stupid", said without taking gloves Me Chloé Arnoux.

If he finds himself in the box it is mainly because of an SMS sent by Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, six minutes before launching his truck into the crowd, at Ramzi Arefa.

This SMS, read and reread at the bar since the start of the trial, all the parties know it by heart.

"Salam Ramzi (...) I wanted to tell you that the gun you gave me yesterday is very good, so we're bringing 5 from your friend's house, 7, rue Miollis, 5th floor. It's for Chokri and his friends, (they) are ready for next month".

Why so many details?

Did Lahouaiej-Bouhlel deliberately incriminate his friends?

It will be up to the court to decide but for the advice of Chokri Chafroud their "opinion" is that the killer was "crazy" and "perverse".

The prosecution, and many civil parties, refute this thesis.

Against Chokri Chafroud, they summon this image of a vehicle rushing into the crowd that he mentioned three times in messages to the killer on Facebook.

Three months before the attack, Chafroud had written to his friend: "Go ahead, load the truck with 2,000 tons of iron and fuck, cut the brakes on it my dear, and I'll watch".

Asked at the hearing about this sentence, Chokri Chafroud had awkwardly mentioned "Tunisian humor".

The accused will have a last opportunity to speak on Monday morning, before the court retires to deliberate.

The verdict is expected on Tuesday.

With AFP

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