The truck used by the author of the massacre, in Nice, July 14, 2016. VALERY HACHE / AFP Corpses still litter the Promenade des Anglais, July 15, 2016, shortly before 4 a.m., when François Hollande reacts to the truck attack which has just thrown Nice and France into mourning. In a speech from the Elysée, he declared that the carnage which killed 86 people five hours earlier was “an attack whose terrorist character cannot be denied”. The President of the Republic goes so far as to specify the “Islamist” nature of the attack: “After Paris, in January [2015]then in November [2015], with Saint-Denis, now Nice is in turn affected. All of France is under the threat of Islamist terrorism. At this time of night, however, the investigation has only just begun and there is no evidence that the author of the massacre, the Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, is an “Islamist”. He left neither will, nor allegiance, nor the slightest claim, and none of his relatives has yet been heard on his religiosity, which will prove to be non-existent. But the attack is part of a context: the Islamic State (IS) organization has called on its sympathizers to kill unbelievers – “especially the nasty and dirty French people” – by all means, “by crushing them with a car if necessary, and attacks have been increasing on French soil for nearly a year and a half. Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers Attack of July 14, 2016 in Nice: a terrorist trial without author or accomplice By this speech, the President of the Republic was quicker to qualify the “Islamist” nature of the attack of Nice that the EI itself, which will claim it, rare, only two days later. On July 16, the terrorist group takes credit for the massacre in an audio recording broadcast on its official radio station, Al-Bayan: “Responding to calls by the Islamic State to target the states participating in the cross coalition which fights the Islamic State , a Caliphate soldier led a new special operation using a heavy weight to crush the citizens of Crusader France as they celebrated the National Day in Nice. Adrien Guihal, the “voice” of the Nice attack The jihadist who reads the message is French. His name is Adrien Guihal and he works in Syria for the IS media department, along with the brothers Fabien and Jean-Michel Clain, who claimed responsibility for the attacks of November 13, 2015. Presumed dead in Syria, the Clain brothers were sentenced in their absence, on June 29 at the trial of these attacks, to life imprisonment for “complicity in murder”, for having claimed responsibility for these attacks, which had been organized from Syria. You have 60.27% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.