Sick Facebook messages reveal the Bastille Bastard had help and planned the attack ‘for months’
Five suspected accomplices have been arrested for helping Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel to and police are searching for more
SHOCKING Facebook messages from an accomplice to the Bastille Bastard told him to "load the truck with 2,000 tones of iron, release the breaks (sic) and I will watch".
The evil message was sent months before the horrific attack which left 84 people dead in the southern French city of Nice.
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Mollins said: "Investigations have not only confirmed the premeditated nature of the attack, but allowed us to establish that (Bouhlel) had support and accomplices in the preparation and execution of his criminal act."
Examination of the terrorist's mobile phone showed he had taken pictures at a Bastille Day fireworks display in Nice last year, as well as on a concert on the Promenade des Anglais on July 17, 2015.
On April 4, another Tunisian, Chokri C, 37, had sent Bouhlel a Facebook message reading: "Load the truck with 2,000 tonnes of iron... release the brakes my friend and I will watch."
Bouhlel was killed by police after barreling his 20-ton truck down Nice's famed Promenade des Anglais for some two kilometers.
Bouhlel and a 30-year-old French-Tunisian with no previous convictions had phoned each other 1,218 times in a year, Molins said.
Four days earlier, the prosecutor said, a text message from the same man found on a phone seized at Bouhlel's said: "I'm not Charlie; I'm happy. They have brought in the soldiers of Allah."
The message was dated three days after the January 2015 newsroom massacre at Charlie Hebdo, the satirical publication, and the worldwide movement of solidarity for the victims and France, "I'm Charlie."
Hours after the attack, the same man filmed the bloody scene on the promenade.
The aftermath of the Nice attack has seen France being torn apart, with finger-pointing and accusations that security was wanting despite the state of emergency that has been in place since the Paris attacks last November.
Earlier today, French officials defended the government's security measures in Nice on the night of the attack, even as the interior minister acknowledged that national police were not, as he had claimed before, stationed at the entrance to the closed-off boulevard during the attack.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve's clarification comes after a newspaper accused French authorities of lacking transparency in their handling of the massacre.
Cazeneuve said Thursday that only local police, who are more lightly armed, were guarding the entrance to the Promenade des Anglais when Bouhlel drove a 19-metric ton (20-ton) truck onto the sidewalk in Nice before mowing down pedestrians who had gathered to watch a holiday fireworks show.
Cazeneuve then launched an internal police investigation into the handling of the Nice attack.
President Francois Hollande said the conclusions of that investigation will be known next week.
He said any police "shortcomings" will be carefully addressed but defended French authorities' actions.
He said: "There's no room for polemics, there's only room for transparency.
"The necessary, serious preparations had been made for the July 14 festivities."
Earlier, the French newspaper Liberation said Cazeneuve lied about the whereabouts of the national police officers and cars in Nice that day and accused authorities of lacking transparency.
Using witness statements and photos, Liberation showed Thursday that only one local police car was stationed at the entrance to the Nice boulevard on July 14.
The paper quoted Nice police officer Yves Bergerat, who said local police forces' guns and bullets aren't even equipped "to puncture the tires" let alone shatter the windshield of a truck that size.
Cazeneuve accused the paper of conspiracy theories and said several "heroic" national police who killed the attacker after an exchange of fire were stationed further down the promenade.
The criticism comes as the National Assembly extended France's state of emergency for six months.
The security measure had been in place since the Nov. 13 Paris attacks that killed 130 victims and were claimed by the Islamic State group.
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