two men sentenced on appeal to 18 years in prison

The Paris Special Assize Court delivered its verdict on Thursday June 13 on appeal against two defendants tried for their alleged role in the Nice attack which left 86 dead on July 14, 2016. The two men were found guilty and are sentenced to 18 years of criminal imprisonment.

Only two of the eight accused at first instance, Mohamed Ghraieb and Chokri Chafroud, two friends of Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, the 31-year-old Tunisian author of the ram truck attack on the Promenade des Anglais on the evening of the fireworks, had chosen to appeal. Prosecuted for terrorist conspiracy, they were both sentenced to 18 years of criminal imprisonment during the first trial in December 2022.

While in the first instance the prosecution had requested 15 years of imprisonment against the two men, the attorney general, Naïma Rudloff, had this time requested the legal maximum provided for, i.e. 20 years of imprisonment against them.

“Give me a chance”asked Mohamed Ghraieb before the court retired to deliberate. “I am not a terrorist. I can be reinstated. I’m not dangerous. I am against all forms of violence”, he implored. His co-accused did not wish to speak.

Considering that the case was based only on “fantasies” and ” hypotheses “, the lawyers of the two accused pleaded on Tuesday June 11 and Wednesday June 12 for their acquittal. The court was composed entirely of professional magistrates and chaired by Christophe Petiteau, a magistrate accustomed to trials for terrorism.

“Logistical and ideological support”

Mohamed Ghraieb, a 48-year-old Franco-Tunisian hotel receptionist, and Chokri Chafroud, 44, an undocumented Tunisian migrant, were suspected of having brought “logistical and ideological support” to the author of the Nice attack.

According to the prosecution, which admits that the two accused are neither accomplices nor co-authors of the acts of Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, they would nevertheless have been asked by their compatriot to provide him with a weapon and would have been associated with the rental of the truck which was used in the massacre.

During the trial, the two accused repeated that they had not looked for a weapon for Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel – but Mr. Chafroud gave several versions on the subject – and that they had not been associated with the truck rental.

A few days before the attack, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had separately invited the two men to get into his truck with him. But it was not a question of carrying out reconnaissance with a view to the attack, the prosecution admitted.

Messages sent to the author of the attack

Coming from a rural family in southern Tunisia, Chokri Chafroud left school at the age of 11. After a first visit to Nice in the summer of 2015 where he met Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel for the first time, he returned to Tunisia at the beginning of 2016, without losing contact with his compatriot, before returning clandestinely to Nice in spring 2016.

Read at the hearing, the messages sent by Chokri Chafroud to Lahouaiej-Bouhlel while he was in Tunisia, frustrated and penniless, are of rare obscenity and often very violent. Three months before the attack, Chokri Chafroud had written to his friend: “go ahead, load the truck with 2,000 tons of iron and fuck it, cut its brakes my dear, and I’ll watch”. For the prosecution, this type of messages could have inspired Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’s modus operandi.

As for Mohamed Ghraieb, the prosecution considered that he could be at the origin of the radicalization of the killer. In January 2015, three days after the attack on Charlie Hebdo, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel wrote on his social networks ” I am Charlie “. Mohamed Ghraieb replied: “I’m not Charlie…) Did you see how God sent soldiers of Allah to finish them off like sh…!! ». At first instance, Mr. Ghraieb denied being the author of these hate messages. On appeal, he admitted having written them. “When I see what I wrote, I am ashamed”he said.