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A 47-year-old man suspected of having been in contact with the perpetrator of the attack in which three people died in a church in Nice, in the south of France, was arrested on Thursday night, a judicial source reported on Friday.
The alleged perpetrator of the deadly knife attack against a man and two women is a 21-year-old Tunisian, who arrived in France on 9 October from Italy.
The individual arrested on Thursday is suspected of having been in contact with him on the eve of the events, said the judicial source, confirming information from the French newspaper Nice-Matin.
The attacker stormed the Notre-Dame basilica in Nice, armed with a knife, where he cut the throat of a woman and the sacristan. The third victim, a 44-year-old Brazilian, managed to flee seriously injured to a neighboring bar, but died shortly after.
The attacker, who according to a source close to the investigation is called Brahim Aouissaoui, repeatedly shouted “Allah Akbar” (Allah is the greatest). He was injured by at least six shots during the police intervention and is currently hospitalized.
The attack took place less than two weeks after the murder by beheading of Professor Samuel Paty in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a small town 50 km from Paris, for showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in class.
The French government raised the level of security throughout the country to “attack urgency”, which corresponds to a state of maximum vigilance, and increased the number of military personnel patrolling the streets from 3,000 to 7,000, in particular to protect places of worship. on the eve of the Catholic feast of All Saints on Sunday.
France has been plagued by high-impact terrorist attacks since 2015, when a jihadist attack on January 7 against the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo left 12 dead. On November 13 of the same year, a jihadist command carried out coordinated attacks in Paris that left 130 dead.
Nice was targeted on July 14, 2016, in an attack that left 86 people dead in which a man deliberately rammed a truck into a crowd celebrating the French national holiday.
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