Paris, Feb 26 (EFE). – Tunisian national Brahim Aouissaoui was sentenced Wednesday by a French court to life in prison without the possibility of commutation for the deadly knife attack in a Nice church on Oct. 29, 2020.
The special court that tried him in Paris accepted the maximum sentence requested by the prosecution.
Aouissaoui, 25, admitted he was responsible for the attack but claimed he did not remember what happened.
The murderous church rampage on Oct. 29, 2020, less than two weeks after the beheading of history teacher Samuel Paty by a Chechen refugee, was one of several deadly incidents in France blamed on Islamist extremists since 2015.
Prosecutors said Aouissaoui killed 60-year-old worshipper Nadine Devillers, 44-year-old Franco-Brazilian mother Simone Barreto Silva, and Vincent Loques, 55.
Barreto Silva died from fourteen stab wounds inflicted by the assailant when she entered the Basilica of Our Lady of the Assumption after hearing a loud commotion.
There she found the body of Devillers, Aouissaoui’s first victim. She was able to leave the church and take refuge in a nearby establishment, where she died minutes later.
The church’s sacristan, Vincent Loquès, tried to subdue the assailant and was also killed before a municipal police patrol passing through the area entered the church.
Aouissaoui turned on them, shouting “Allahu akbar” before being shot.
He was seriously wounded and spent several weeks in a coma, and has insisted that he remembers nothing.
However, his medical examination revealed no brain damage and a psychiatric evaluation concluded that his judgment was not impaired at the time of the events.
The accused, whose itinerary was reconstructed by the investigators thanks to the large number of CCTV cameras in Nice, had arrived in France from Italy less than three days before the events.
He attended a mosque and had been to the church he later attacked several times. On the morning of the attack, Aouissaoui entered the Notre Dame Basilica in the heart of Nice carrying a copy of the Koran, three knives, and two cell phones, prosecutors said.
On Monday, during his interrogation, he changed his version, acknowledging the facts and justifying it as an act of revenge against Muslims, although he denied it was terrorism.
Aouissaoui claimed the killings were “legitimate” revenge against “the West” for killing “innocent” Muslims.
The defendant assured that he had not prepared his action, pointing out that he had bought some knives “to cut bread” and said he did not remember the details of the crime. EFE
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