When you’re about to commit an atrocity, what’s the last thing you send to your brother?

Apparently a selfie of yourself laughing, as you mingle with the people whose lives you are about to destroy.

Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel phoned his brother in the hours before his attack in Nice, with this below from the Independent:

His brother Jabeur told Reuters in Tunisia that Mohamed had called him for a final time on Thursday afternoon and sent a picture of himself among the crowds in the southern French city.

“That last day he said he was in Nice with his European friends to celebrate the national holiday,” Jabeur said, adding that in the photo “he seemed very happy and pleased, he was laughing a lot.”

Reuters could not verify the existence of the photograph, which he declined to share.

His brother also shed some light on phone calls in the weeks before the attack, which had apparently become more frequent:

“He spoke to me about the town of Msaken, about boxing and sport, and how he was going to come back to Msaken soon,” Jabeur told Reuters.

“He asked for news about our parents … he always spoke to me, we were very close,” he added. “He sent us small sums of money recently, sometimes 300 or 400 euros ($330-$440), and mobile telephones.”

And what about those text messages then? Over to the Daily Mail:

The 31-year-old sent the message at 10.27pm on Thursday saying: ‘Bring more weapons, bring five of them to C.’ An earlier message said: ‘It’s good. I have the equipment,’ French TV reported.

The significance of ‘C’ was unclear but Bouhlel had hidden two pistols, ammunition, imitation machine guns and a grenade in the lorry cabin. He launched his attack at around 10.45pm…

And in further messages now revealed according to Nice Matin, the local newspaper, he talked of his delight in obtaining a 7.65 pistol and his hope for getting other weapons.

As is always the case, an in-depth review of whether signs were missed is underway, and the picture painted of Bouhlel is one of a man with a violent past history:

A psychiatrist who treated him more than a decade ago told Reuters on Sunday that he had been aggressive towards his parents and had body image problems…

“He had behavioural problems with his parents at that time … he was very aggressive with them,” Hamouda said. “Sometimes he had tried to lock his parents in a room in their house”…

“He had problems with his body,” said Hamouda. “He said: ‘Why am I thin? I’m not happy with my body.'”

He was, at the time of the attack, on medication:

Bouhlel was on a cocktail of drugs for schizophrenia, alcoholism and depression, it has also emerged. The Bastille Day mass murderer was prescribed the medicine to control increasingly violent rages.

The 31-year-old had been on medication since the age of 12 – a year before he left his hometown in Tunisia to move to Nice.

Here’s hoping local communities can root out evil like this before it’s too late.

[sources:dailymail&independent]