Nice attack: Italy authorizes the extradition of a suspected accomplice

Italian justice authorized, this Thursday evening, the extradition to France of an Albanian suspected of having supplied a weapon to the author of the truck attack perpetrated in Nice on July 14, 2016, the Italian agency said. AGI.

Endri Elezi, who was the subject of a European warrant issued in April 2020 by France was arrested on April 21 in Sparanise (near Naples).

During the hearing at the Naples Court of Appeal, the 28-year-old Albanian, quoted by AGI, outright denied the charges against him: “I have never sold or supplied weapons and I do not know none of the people involved ”.

This Italian court decision comes after the Paris Court of Appeal confirmed, in March, the referral to the assizes of eight people, including Endri Elezi, in this case.

VIDEO.

July 14: horror in Nice

On July 14, 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel had darkened with a truck on the crowd gathered on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice on the occasion of the National Day, killing 86 people.

According to the French authorities, Endri Elezi, nicknamed "Gino", allegedly provided the assailant with an assault rifle, coming from a burglary and hidden in a forest on the heights of Nice, through another Albanian. .

Common law offenses

Since the investigation is over and the trial is already scheduled, more information will have to be ordered, in particular so that the Albanian is questioned and submitted to the compulsory psychiatric and psychological examinations, before being able to be possibly judged, explained a judicial source. Frenchwoman during her arrest. Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel having been shot dead at the wheel of the truck, the special assize court will examine the responsibilities of members of his entourage and of intermediaries involved in the circuit of the weapons intended for him. Endri Elezi is indicted for "criminal association" and violation of the law on weapons ", in the part of the investigation relating to arms trafficking.

The judicial information could not demonstrate, for five suspects who supplied weapons to Lahouaiej Bouhlel, that they were aware of his plan to attack. The terrorist qualification was therefore ruled out and they are sent back to the assizes for common law offenses. The trial, which is due to last several weeks, will take place at the Paris courthouse, after that of the attacks of November 13, 2015 in the French capital and its surroundings.