The 23-year-old student was described by friends as 'like any other young man' before he started praising jihad and posting extremist messages.
Tunisia beach gunman Seifeddine Rezgui was a break dancing enthusiast who lived his life 'like any other young man' - according to shocked friends and neighbours.
The 23-year-old engineering student massacred 39 people in the popular Tunisian resort of Sousse before being shot dead by security forces.
The killer was described as a football-loving young man who started to raise concern as he posted extremist messages on social media and praised jihad.
Rezgui came from the town of Gaafour in the Siliana region, the country's prime minister Habib Essid said yesterday.
In the months before the atrocity, he was based in the Islamic town of Kairouan, 30 miles from Sousse. He had never travelled abroad.
He lived with four other young men also thought to be students, and was studying aviation at the local university – just as Mohammad Atta, the 9/11 leader, did before the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York.
When they moved into the house in the R'bib Sidi Belgacem district a year ago, neighbours were alarmed by their attitude.
"They didn't even say hello to us," said Salah Korbia, who lives opposite the tiny mosque where they spent much of their time.
"Everyone in the neighbourhood was against them being there," he said.
A Facebook page believed to have belonged to him shows him posting about Real Madrid and the Tunisian national football team.
Rezgui's uncle said he was "just like the other young men" who liked to play football or go to a cafe after praying in the local mosque.
He loved break dancing and entered several competitions in the capital city Tunis and a video has emerged appearing to show him dancing around five years ago.
Just hours before the attack, Rezgui was at home talking with his uncle about his life and studies.
"Everything was perfectly normal," his uncle Ali Bin Muhammad Rezgui said. The distraught 70-year-old said: "He was with me on Thursday. We sat in the garden and he was perfectly normal.
"We had no idea what he was planning. We talked about his life and studies. That was the last time I saw him.
"He was a sweet boy when he was younger. He was a breakdancer and loved football. He should have had a long, happy life."
Neighbours suggested the gunman may have been brainwashed.
Monia Riahi, 50, who is a neighbour and family friend, described him as "good, good, good!".
She told the Observer: "I've known him since he was small. He was never in trouble with anyone ever. Maybe he was brainwashed or something."
Rezgui's father, who is a day labourer working on farms or the nearby railway line was taken to the Tunisian capital for police questioning.
Neighbour Ammar Fazai, 64, told the Observer: "I think maybe, just maybe, it was poverty that did it."
A Tunisian Interior Ministry source said that while Rezgui did not have a criminal record, he was known to authorities for ‘low level radicalism’ and was once stopped by police for smoking cannabis.
The source confirmed that Rezgui was an active member of a radical group called Islamic Youth and would go to mosques controlled by radical preachers.
Images have emerged of the the gunman standing barefoot on the beach dressed in a black T-shirt and shorts, with a gun in his hand
Photographs taken after the attack appeared to show Rezgui's body after he was shot by police.
A picture released by Islamic State showed clean-cut Seifedine Rezgui dressed in a crisp white T-shirt wearing an easy smile as he carried off a relaxed pose for the camera.
IS posted on the internet: “Soldier of the Khalifat, Abu Yahya AlQuirawani, may God accept him, a night of the Sousse invasion in the Muslim Tunisia.”
The only clues as to the 23-year-old aviation student’s deadly mission were two Kalashnikovs in the otherwise nondescript background.
