It is a sequence of one minute and thirteen seconds, which will have convinced Tunisia to open an investigation after the attack perpetrated in the Notre-Dame-de-Nice basilica, on October 29, by one of its nationals, Brahim A., aged 21.
In this poor quality video, filmed over the phone and that Le Parisien was able to consult, a man claims, with his face uncovered, the knife attack which left three dead, on behalf of the group "Al Mahdi in southern Tunisia", condemning the “provocations of France and Emmanuel Macron against Islam”.
While three men are currently in police custody in France, for having been in contact with the suspect, still hospitalized following his arrest at the scene of the facts, the investigations aim to determine if he could benefit from complicity.
Or even if the operation was planned, sponsored.
According to Mohsen Dali, spokesperson for the Tunis Court of First Instance, the suspect made the clandestine crossing to Lampedusa on September 17, and would not have arrived on French territory until the end of October, before heading to Nice.
A very tight chronology, which suggests premeditation.
Questioned by Tunisian television, the mother of the suspected terrorist, who lives in a popular suburb of Sfax, assures that he was not radicalized.
The young man made a living from reselling contraband gasoline, consuming alcohol and drugs.
However, according to a source close to the prosecution in Tunis, he would have attended, with young men of his entourage, demonstrations of the Islamists Ansar El Charia, when the group was legal and active in Kairouan, between 2012 and 2013, and that the family lived there.
"It's the jihad of the poor"
Like all this generation, the little brothers of the revolutionaries who made the barricades of 2011, he was therefore immersed in a radical discourse, mixing religion and demands for rights for forgotten Tunisian youth.
While economic conditions have seen little improvement for a majority of the population, the revolution's broken promises have fostered the emergence of another type of fundamentalism, for which the Islamist Ennahdha party is now too moderate, but with less and less ideological foundations.
"It is the jihad of the poor", comments another source close to the Tunisian Ministry of the Interior, according to which Brahim A. was captured by surveillance cameras, just before the facts in a state of agitation, possibly under the influence of a substance.
“We think he could have been recovered in Italy, in Lampedusa or Bari, in exchange for a consideration, a promise of support for his family, for example.
"
This hypothesis would confirm the suspicions of an opportunist claim: the Al Mahdi group was, until then, unknown to the Tunisian services;
Mohsen Dali clarified that the investigation should first verify its very existence.
In a political context where the far-right Al Karama party (with 18 out of 217 deputies since the 2019 elections) seems to thrive on popular disarray, with a violently anti-France and Salafist-inspired speech, such a broadcast on social networks would primarily function to tense the debate in Tunisia.
And this a few months before the 10th anniversary of the revolution, which the Democrats hope to take for themselves.