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A third suspect has been arrested in France following an Islamic extremist knife attack on a church in Nice that killed three people.
Meanwhile, the family of the alleged Tunisian attacker demanded to see video footage of what happened.
Investigators in France, Tunisia and Italy are trying to determine the motive of the main suspect Ibrahim Issaoui and whether he acted alone and whether his attack on the Notre Dame church on Thursday was premeditated.
Authorities have called the attack, which took place amid mounting tensions over cartoons published by a French newspaper mocking the prophet Muhammad, as an act of Islamist terrorism.
Issaoui, who transited Italy last month on his way to France, is in critical condition at a French hospital after being injured by police when he was arrested.
A 35-year-old man who met Issaoui in Nice was arrested overnight, a judicial official said Saturday.
A 47-year-old man who met Issaoui the night before the attack was already in custody, bringing the number of suspects detained to three. His connection to the attack remains unclear.
A previously unknown Tunisian extremist group claimed responsibility for the attack, and Tunisian and French authorities are investigating whether the claim is legitimate.
In Issaoui’s hometown of Sfax, his family expressed shock and asked for peace. But they also expressed bewilderment that the young man who drank alcohol and showed no outward signs of radicalism would flee to France and attack a church.
“We want the truth about how my son carried out this terrorist attack. I want to see what the surveillance cameras showed. I will not give up my child’s rights outside the country. I want my son, dead or alive, ”his mother, Gamra, told the Associated Press, her words often interrupted by tears.
Issaoui’s father and brother Wissem said that if he actually carried out the attack, he should face justice.
“We are Muslims, we are against terrorism, we are poor. Show me that my brother committed the attack and judge him to be a terrorist, ”Wissem said. “If he was the attacker, he will take responsibility.”
On Tina Street in the Nasr neighborhood of Sfax, friends and neighbors described Issaoui as a man who sold motorcycle fuel. While he was not hungry or homeless, he was poor like many in the area, poverty that drives more and more young Tunisians to seek work and opportunities in Europe.
He had had little run-ins with the law as a teenager, but nothing to alert the Tunisian authorities to possible extremist leanings. That meant that when Italy handed him an expulsion order, he was basically free to go wherever he wanted.
Italy’s Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese told the AP that Italy’s overloaded repatriation centers had no place for him, despite agreements with Tunisia regulating the return of citizens who do not qualify for asylum in Italy.
“Obviously, we give priority to people who are singled out by the police or by the Tunisian authorities,” Lamorgese said. “The number of places is not infinite and, therefore, it could not be placed within a repatriation center.”
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