Italian police have arrested a 28-year-old Albanian man suspected of helping procure a weapon for the radical Islamic extremist behind the 2016 Nice terrorist attack.
Albanian national Endri E. was taken into custody this week in the commune of Sparanise near Naples after France issued a Europe-wide arrest warrant for him.
The 28-year-old is accused of supplying a weapon to terrorist Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who carried out the 2016 Nice truck attack that caused the deaths of 86 as he ran people over on Bastille Day along Nice’s Promenade des Anglais before being shot dead by police.
According to a report from the newspaper L’Alsace, the arrest came after the Albanian was located through an exchange of information between French and Italian authorities.
A trial connected to the 2016 Nice terror attack is expected in 2022, according to the newspaper. Eight people connected to the attacker will also be taken to a special courtroom in the Palais de Justice in Paris to determine their roles and connections to the attacker and the attack itself.
The three main defendants in the case, two Tunisian migrants and a Franco-Tunisian, are suspected of having known Bouhlel had a plan to carry out an attack and were indicted for the “complicity of murders in connection with a terrorist enterprise”.
In December, the trial for the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack accomplices ended with several of the 14 defendants being found guilty of various terrorist offences.
Ali Riza Polat, the main defendant, was not found guilty of criminal terrorist association but was convicted of complicity to murder.
Many of the defendants were linked to the kosher market killings committed by Amedy Coulibaly after the Charlie Hebdo attack, including Hayat Boumeddiene, the widow of Coulibaly — who was found guilty in absentia due to the fact that she remains at large.
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