Two 2016 Nice terror attack accomplices appeal conviction

Two men who received the longest prison terms for allegedly aiding in the 2016 terror attack in the French resort city of Nice have appealed their conviction, prosecutors told AFP on Monday.

Their appeal came weeks after French judges ordered prison terms for eight people over the attack, in which a suspected Islamist rammed a lorry into a crowd celebrating the July 14 national holiday.

Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian, killed 86 people and wounded more than 450 others during a four-minute rampage on a seafront embankment before being shot dead by police.

Two suspects, Mohamed Ghraieb and Chokri Chafroud, were sentenced to 18 years earlier this month for helping the attacker.

The judges ruled that they had to have known about his turn to Islamist radicalism and potential to carry out an attack, based on phone calls and messages between the three in the days ahead of the massacre.

Ghraieb and Chafroud, who denied the charges against them during the months-long trial, have now appealed, the national anti-terrorist prosecutor said.

The other six suspects, who were handed prison terms from two to 12 years, have decided not to appeal, according to the prosecutors.

France has been buffeted by a wave of Islamist terror attacks since the killings at the satirical Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a Jewish supermarket in Paris in January 2015, often by "lone wolf" attackers acting in the name of IS or other jihadist groups.