Nice attack prompts call to extend emergency rule
Print Edition
THE French government, smarting from accusations that it did not do enough to prevent last week’s deadly truck attack in Nice, urged lawmakers yesterday to extend a period of emergency rule that gives police greater search-and-arrest powers.
Criticized by opposition politicians and jeered by crowds at a remembrance ceremony on Monday, Prime Minister Manuel Valls wants lawmakers to back a three-month rollover of the emergency regime imposed after a previous lethal attack last November.
“We need people to stay together, we want to move fast with broad backing,” said government spokesman Stephane Le Foll.
The move came as Nice’s seafront boulevard, the Promenade des Anglais, reopened after Thursday’s attack in which Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a truck into crowds of Bastille Day revellers, killing 84 people before being shot dead by police.
Dozens more were hurt and 19 people remain on life support five days after the carnage that prosecutor Francois Molins described as terrorist. Islamic State has claimed the attack although no hard evidence linking Bouhlel to the militant group has been found.
Molins said Bouhlel had shown sudden signs of interest in hardline Islamist propaganda in the days before he ran amok while noting that he also ate pork, drank alcohol and engaged in “unbridled sexual activity.”
Speaking ahead of last night’s parliamentary debate on the emergency rule plan, Le Foll said President Francois Hollande’s government was willing to consider a longer, six-month extension in line with demands from right-wing members of the National Assembly.
Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said French fighter jets would keep bombing strongholds of Islamic State, which has seized control of parts of Syria and Iraq and called for believers to attack France because of its bombardments.
“This is not just symbolic,” Le Drian said of the emergency rule bill, adding that France was second only to the United States in the number of airstrikes against Islamic State bases.
“We can see from what happened in Germany that the threat is everywhere,” the minister said, alluding to an attack on a train on Monday night.
As tensions ran high over risks of further attacks in France, police officials confirmed that explosives had been found at the flat of an arrested taxi driver who was on an intelligence services watchlist.
The number of French people who believe Hollande is up to the task of tackling terrorism plunged from 50 percent to 33 percent after the attack in Nice.
France imposed emergency rule after the November 13 attacks in which Islamist militants killed 130 people in Paris, giving the police powers to search homes and place people under house arrest without advance clearance. The bill to be debated last night would grant greater powers to dig into computers and mobile phones.
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