The Islamist attack in Nice on July 14, 2016, in which 86 people died and hundreds were injured, set off all alarms at the White House, then occupied by Barack Obama. In information revealed by the French newspaper Nice-Matin, the reason for the concern was that Malia, Obama’s daughter, then 18 years old, was in Antibes, just 25 kilometers from Nice, at the time of the attack. The young woman was traveling on the French Riviera to celebrate her coming of age. The Secret Service evacuated her immediately.
The urgent evacuation was due to the fact that the French Police and the Secret Service located three men of Iraqi origin near the four-star hotel where the young woman was staying, maintaining a “suspicious” attitude. The men were observed around 2:00 a.m., just three hours after the Nice massacre. Malia Obama was evacuated immediately.
The three men were detained by U.S. agents, who handed them over to the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI), the French domestic intelligence service.
The French Police escorted Malia Obama and the Secret Service to the very runway of the airport
The evacuation operation of Malia Obama and her companions was carried out by Laurent Alcaraz, a senior French police officer, who spoke with Nice-Matin. He recalls that ten U.S. agents were waiting for him at the hotel where Malia was staying. “They told me: ‘We leave in 30 minutes’.” The French Police escorted the Secret Service along a route planned by Alcaraz, and they took Malia Obama and her companions to the very runway of the airport.
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Malia and her friends were taken to a safe place on a private plane. The arrested Iraqis, who also had Danish nationality, were detained for 48 hours and released without charges. Alcaraz recalls the signs that made the Secret Service suspicious: “The mobile phones of the three men had been located near the site of the attack minutes before it occurred. Also, although they claimed to be tourists, they had visited a small mosque located in a neighborhood with a significant immigrant population.”
Nice-Matin also spoke with Pascal Le Roux, director of the hotel where Malia stayed. He explains that the reservation was made in the name of the U.S. embassy, without revealing the names of the guests. “I found out it was the president’s [Obama] daughter shortly before she arrived from Paris with several friends,” he concludes.
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