Credit Where Credit Is Not Due

French investigators are still trying to piece together the motives behind the gruesome truck attack on the Nice seafront that killed 84 people last week, even as ISIS passively took credit for the attack with a tepid statement that experts suspect reflects a new strategy by the group to win publicity from attacks committed by people with no known ties to it.

[...]

In response to the ISIS statement and a lack of direct evidence of a connection, the French Interior Minister responded that Bouhlel appears to have been “rapidly radicalized.”

“[The statement] reflects how little we have found [about an ISIS link], although the investigation continues,” said one of the officials, supporting reports that Bouhlel had never displayed religious devotion and led a life of drinking, drug use and petty crime that had led to run-ins with police and a conviction for assault.

[...]

The attacks in Orlando and now Nice [...] have seen statements that appear to show a willingness to claim attacks that ISIS had literally no direct involvement in beyond the possible interest of the attackers in the group, as was the case with Orlando, where Omar Mateen only declared his allegiance to the group as the attack was underway and investigators were unable to find a direct link beyond the statement.

  Buzzfeed

[Mohamed Lahouaiej] Bouhlel, who had been known to the French police since January, had been on the radar for six months for petty criminality. It is understood he lost his job as a delivery driver when he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into four cars and had also been involved in a bar brawl. Walid Hamou, a cousin of Bouhlel's wife Hajer Khalfallah, told MailOnline: 'Bouhlel was not religious. He did not go to the mosque, he did not pray, he did not observe Ramadan.'He drank alcohol, ate pork and took drugs. This is all forbidden under Islam.

'He was not a Muslim, he was a s***.

'He beat his wife, my cousin, he was a nasty piece of work.'

Yesterday, he was stopped by police just hours before he crushed scores of people underneath the wheels of his 25 tonne truck and fired shots indiscriminately at police and innocent bystanders.

[...]

[He] was in the process of getting a divorce.

  Daily Mail

Sounds very much like the Orlando killer. Authorities might stop more mass killings if they focused on wife beaters instead of Muslims.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.