The man who used a 20-ton truck to plow down hundreds of people in Nice this week, killing 84, somehow became radicalized very quickly and hadn't even yet shown up on any anti-terrorist intelligence radar, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Saturday.
"It seems that the attacker got radicalized very rapidly," Cazeneuve said of Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31.
As the investigation continued, French authorities were questioning five people Saturday. Among them was Bouhlel's ex-wife, who was taken into custody Friday, the anti-terrorism prosecutor's office said. The other four are men.
Bouhlel, a resident of Nice, was born in Tunisia but had a permit to live and work in France.
While Cazeneuve said no evidence had yet been found to tie Bouhlel to jihadism, a source close to the investigation told CNN that a phone number belonging to Bouhlel cropped up in a counterterrorism investigation into an associate of Omar Diaby, a 41-year-old Senagalese jihadi who lived in Nice before traveling to Syria.
Diaby, who calls himself Omar Omsen, commands a French jihadi batallion in Syria affiliated with Jabhat al Nusra, al Qaeda's branch in Syria. The source said investigators made the link after cross referencing case files after the attack in Nice. Investigators are looking into the nature of the links between Bouhlel and Diaby's associate, but they cannot rule out that the two were possibly just part of the same social circle.
French counter terrorism officials have established that a series of Youtube videos Diaby recorded in Nice in 2012 before departing for Syria helped motivate a significant number of French extremists to travel to fight in Syria. In May, Diaby revealed in a Skype interview with a French journalist that he had faked his own death in August 2015 to get medical treatment outside Syria.
Read more: Nice, France attack: Attacker was 'radicalized rapidly,' French interior minister says - CNN-com
A atomic bomb is the solution.
France been the target 3 times too many, this is so bad on so many levels. Family to Muhamed say's he is sick and lost his wife. Do all sick individuals decide to kill a bunch of people at random ?
Most of us haven't quite realized there is something extraordinary happening. What is happening to this world.
It's horrible.
I don't think it will never stop!!
"It seems that the attacker got radicalized very rapidly," Cazeneuve said of Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31.
As the investigation continued, French authorities were questioning five people Saturday. Among them was Bouhlel's ex-wife, who was taken into custody Friday, the anti-terrorism prosecutor's office said. The other four are men.
Bouhlel, a resident of Nice, was born in Tunisia but had a permit to live and work in France.
While Cazeneuve said no evidence had yet been found to tie Bouhlel to jihadism, a source close to the investigation told CNN that a phone number belonging to Bouhlel cropped up in a counterterrorism investigation into an associate of Omar Diaby, a 41-year-old Senagalese jihadi who lived in Nice before traveling to Syria.
Diaby, who calls himself Omar Omsen, commands a French jihadi batallion in Syria affiliated with Jabhat al Nusra, al Qaeda's branch in Syria. The source said investigators made the link after cross referencing case files after the attack in Nice. Investigators are looking into the nature of the links between Bouhlel and Diaby's associate, but they cannot rule out that the two were possibly just part of the same social circle.
French counter terrorism officials have established that a series of Youtube videos Diaby recorded in Nice in 2012 before departing for Syria helped motivate a significant number of French extremists to travel to fight in Syria. In May, Diaby revealed in a Skype interview with a French journalist that he had faked his own death in August 2015 to get medical treatment outside Syria.
Read more: Nice, France attack: Attacker was 'radicalized rapidly,' French interior minister says - CNN-com