Bastille Day truck attack Nice attacker posed for selfies in truck used to kill 84 people Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel seen smiling and giving the finger in images apparently taken days before Bastille Day massacre Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel and an unidentified man in the truck used in the Nice attack. Photograph: TF1 
 
 Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel is seen giving the finger while at the steering wheel of the truck he used to kill 84 people in Nice, in the latest pictures to emerge of the 31-year-old Tunisian. 
 
 Apparently taken days before he drove into crowds celebrating Bastille Day in the southern French city, the image also shows an unidentified man sitting on the other side of the cab. A second picture shows him standing by the 19-tonne white lorry, grinning for the camera, alongside a man wearing a Paris Saint-Germain football shirt. 
 
 French prosecutors have described the massacre on the Promenade des Anglais as a “premeditated, prepared and planned” attack. Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had grown a beard in the eight days before he carried out the attack and told friends “the significance of the beard is religious”, prosecutor François Molins told reporters on Monday. 
 
 Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had not previously shown any sign of being religious, and “ate pork, drank alcohol, took drugs and had a promiscuous sex life”, Molins said, outlining police evidence. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lahouaiej-Bouhlel poses outside the truck with another man. Photograph: TF1 
 
 Investigators had found no proof of any “allegiance or any direct link” to Islamic State or other terrorist organisations, according to Molins. However, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’s computer contained violent images from radical Islamic sites and links to jihadi websites, as well as articles about the Bastille Day fireworks display in Nice, the recent nightclub attack in Orlando, shootings in Dallas, the killing of two police officers in the Parisian suburb of Magnanville, and research into Osama bin Laden and the Algerian terrorist leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar. 
 
 As Nice showed signs of slowly returning to normality – with joggers, cyclists and sunbathers making the most of blazing sunshine – the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, urged MPs to back a three-month extension of the emergency powers imposed after the Paris attacks last November. 
 
 “We need people to stay together, we want to move fast with broad backing,” said the government spokesman, Stéphane Le Foll. 
 
 Speaking ahead of Tuesday evening’s parliamentary debate on the state of emergency, Le Foll said President François Hollande’s Socialist government was willing to consider a longer, six-month extension in line with demands from rightwing members of the national assembly. ||||| TUNIS (Reuters) - The Tunisian man who killed at least 84 people in France by mowing down Bastille Day revelers with a lorry had phoned his brother hours earlier and sent a picture of himself laughing as he mingled with the crowd, the brother told Reuters. 
 
 A couple walk through the empty flower market in the old city and near a sign which reads, "Pray for Nice" days after a truck attack on the Promenade des Anglais on Bastille Day killed scores and injured as many in Nice, France, July 17, 2016. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard 
 
 Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old delivery driver, was shot dead by police on Thursday night after careering along a packed sea-front promenade in Nice for about 2 km (1.5 miles), zigzagging in order to run over as many victims as possible. 
 
 His brother Jabeur told Reuters in Tunisia that Mohamed had called him for a final time on Thursday afternoon and sent a picture of himself among the crowds in the southern French city. 
 
 “That last day he said he was in Nice with his European friends to celebrate the national holiday,” Jabeur said, adding that in the photo “he seemed very happy and pleased, he was laughing a lot.” 
 
 Reuters could not verify the existence of the photograph, which he declined to share. 
 
 Mohamed Bouhlel had a criminal record and was known to French police, but not to the intelligence services. His motive remains unclear. 
 
 France’s prime minister said in remarks published on Sunday that the attack, which was claimed by Islamic State, was Islamist in nature and that Bouhlel had radicalized “very quickly”. 
 
 Relatives and former neighbors in Msaken, about 120 km (75 miles) south of Tunis, said Bouhlel had moved to France in 2005 and had last visited four years ago. They described him as sporty, uninterested in religion and from a normal family. 
 
 Family members said Bouhlel had begun calling them frequently in recent weeks. 
 
 “He spoke to me about the town of Msaken, about boxing and sport, and how he was going to come back to Msaken soon,” Jabeur told Reuters. 
 
 “He asked for news about our parents ... he always spoke to me, we were very close,” he added. “He sent us small sums of money recently, sometimes 300 or 400 euros ($330-$440), and mobile telephones.” 
 
 Bouhlel’s sister has said he was treated for psychological issues for years before leaving Tunisia. 
 
 A psychiatrist who treated him more than a decade ago told Reuters on Sunday that he had been aggressive toward his parents and had body image problems. 
 
 The psychiatrist, Chemceddine Hamouda, said Bouhlel’s parents brought him to his clinic in Msaken in August 2004. 
 
 “He had behavioral problems with his parents at that time ... he was very aggressive with them,” Hamouda said. “Sometimes he had tried to lock his parents in a room in their house.” 
 
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 After excelling academically, Bouhlel had drifted away from school, Hamouda said. 
 
 “He had problems with his body,” said Hamouda. “He said: ‘Why am I thin? I’m not happy with my body.’” 
 
 “I just gave him some pills to calm these behavioral issues and this aggression.”
– Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel apparently spent days in a state of gleeful anticipation before he used a truck to kill at least 84 people in Nice, France. The Guardian reports that photos have emerged of the 31-year-old Tunisian posing for selfies in and next to the rented truck used in the horrific attack. In one, Bouhlel and a passenger can be seen giving the camera the finger while sitting in the cab of the truck. The passenger and another man who appears in Bouhlel's photos are among those who were taken in for questioning after the attack last Thursday, the Telegraph reports. Bouhlel's brother Jabeur tells Reuters that Bouhlel "seemed very happy and pleased, he was laughing a lot" in a photo he sent of himself amid a crowd in Nice just hours before the attack. ISIS has called Bouhlel a "soldier," though relatives say he ate pork, drank alcohol, and didn't go to the mosque, the Independent reports. According to reports in French media, phone records have revealed that Bouhlel met both men and women, including a 73-year-old man, through dating sites. Relatives say Bouhlel suffered from mental illness and was radicalized in just two weeks by an ISIS recruiter. David Canter, director of Britain's International Research Center for Investigative Psychology tells the AP that Bouhlel appears to be more of a "spree killer," like the Columbine shooters, than a terrorist. Such killers sometimes align with extremists because they "will hook onto whatever is in the wind at the time they want to express their anger and frustration," he says. (Seven people have been arrested over possible links to the Nice attack.)