In the elements at his disposal he sees the signs of a possible “psychosis”. But the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst questioned this Wednesday at the trial of the Nice attack specifies that a formal diagnosis on the deceased aggressor would be “science fiction”.
The question of Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’s possible mental disorders will not be answered, as the driver of the truck that targeted the crowd on the Promenade des Anglais, killing 86 people and injuring over 450, was shot dead sets fire to the police to end his killing spree. Coming to testify at the bar at the request of the defenders, Francesca Biagi-Chai has repeatedly stressed the limits of the exercise: “we are in science fiction”, “I do not do an expert opinion”.
“Already dead as a subject” when he threw the truck
“In my opinion he came back dead in the truck”, he however advanced, after explaining that when an individual with psychosis intervenes, “he is already dead as a subject, he acts as an object […] of something that governs it from the outside ».
When asked about the only consultation with a psychiatrist from Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, in Tunisia in 2004, she felt that the silence of the then nineteen-year-old young man in front of the doctor and his father who evoked his violent behavior could be an index “to be explored” of the “linguistic break” observed in psychosis.
Even the doctor’s prescription for this one-time consultation – an anxiolytic, an antidepressant but also an antipsychotic, haldol – challenged her. “If you have prescribed haldol, you have detected a defect. It is not easy to give Haldol to a teenager. If she gave it to him, it was because the psychiatrist was alerted by something, ”said Francesca Biagi-Chai.
Disorders “not always evident”
The challenge is not “to request a post-mortem report from an individual of whom nothing is known,” assured Chloé Arnoux, one of the lawyers of Chokri Chafroud, one of the three defendants prosecuted for association with terrorist criminals. While the interrogation of the 43-year-old Tunisian, which began on Tuesday, should continue on Thursday, it is more a question of convincing the court that a person suffering from “mental disorders” can be assisted without being “perceptible to the eye of the layman.
“It is not always noticeable”, confirms the psychiatrist, even if, in retrospect, “if we question the relatives, a lot of strange things will appear”. Can we qualify it as a “weak signal that we can only understand in retrospect? “, Continues the lawyer. “We can call it that, yes”, agrees Francesca Biagi-Chai.
