Daughter of First Nice Attack Victim Seeks Closure as Trial Begins

Six years after the Nice attack, Latifa Charrihi has not been able to overcome the pain inflicted on her by Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel by tearing away her mother. Even if the terrorist was shot down by the police, the Promenade des Anglais now has a different meaning for Latifa Charrihi. For her, the "Prom" has become a cemetery and the place of reminiscence of traumatic images. "The flashing lights in the sky, the smell of blood, my father’s cries," she lists. For six years, the 37-year-old woman has been living in the "hellish wait" for the trial, a necessary step in her mourning.

From this hearing which opens on September 5 in Paris, Latifa Charrihi and her six brothers and sisters expect that it will be clearly stated that Muslims are also victims of this tragedy. For her, the facts since that day are anchored in her memory. She recounts that her mother had insisted to her husband that he take her to see the fireworks and finally convinced him. And then suddenly the drama. She remembers her father’s trembling and unrecognizable voice on the phone. Even worse, on the night of the tragedy, she remembers the lack of compassion of some residents like these young people inside a blue Clio who yelled at them: "It’s well done, it’s your turn now." Or like this man who, seeing Latifa and her veiled sisters come to lay flowers facing the sea, shouted at them: "You should be ashamed to walk around like that!"

If the Nice attack has marked all minds, for the Muslim community which has also lost many of its members, the pain is even greater. "If we go to the end of the logic, it’s as if my client was responsible for the death of her mother," describes the lawyer for the Charrihi family, Nabil Boudi. "It’s gratuitous meanness, nothing to do with Islam," insists Latifa Charrihi. On the attack videos, I clearly saw "that madman get on the sidewalk and target my veiled mother".

She knows that the issue of Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’s mental state will be extensively discussed at the trial. She knows the terrorist’s past because the widow of the latter was her high school classmate. "She told me she was sorry. He didn’t behave like a true Muslim, he seemed crazy. He beat her, left his excrement in the bed of their children." In the investigation file there are two complaints for "habitual" domestic violence, dismissed without further action.

On September 5, seven men and one woman will stand in the dock to answer the charges against them. But Me Boudi intends to "open the debate on the respect by the City of Nice of its obligations in terms of security". Latifa thinks that the way the case is being handled is not the same as in other cases. "Something abnormal, powerful happened to us in the shock. Our mother was in good health, she was just going to watch the fireworks with her family. The media talk less about Nice than other attacks. Why?"

At the trial, Latifa Charrihi plans to recount the "grandiose journey" of her mother, an illiterate woman born in a Berber village in Morocco, who arrived in Nice with her husband in 1983, and who had never ceased to repeat to her daughters their "luck to be in France, to be able to get by without depending on a man". Even though she already knows that the trial will not solve anything, she remains convinced that it will be a big step towards healing.