As the Nantes public prosecutor Pierre Sennès revealed to the Presse-Océan daily, the Rwandan, already arrested and released last week,
admitted "having lit the three fires in the cathedral". He faces a 10-year prison sentence and a fine of 150,000 euros.
A week after the fire in Nantes cathedral, a
voluntary worker from the diocese confessed and was remanded in custody on the night of July 25-26 for "destruction and damage by fire".
"My client cooperated," the defendant's lawyer, Me Quentin Chabert, told the Presse-Océan daily. “He bitterly regrets the facts and evokes that it was a liberation for him. My client is now consumed with remorse and overwhelmed by the magnitude of events, ”he assures us.
The man "admitted, during the first appearance examination before the examining magistrate, having lit the three fires in the cathedral: on the large organ, the small organ and in an electrical panel", specified the prosecutor. of the Republic of Nantes Pierre Sennès on a daily basis.
This 39-year-old man,
who was responsible for closing the cathedral the day before the fire, was indicted "on charges of destruction and damage by fire and placed in pre-trial detention by the judge of freedoms and detention", the prosecutor said in a statement.
The rector of Nantes cathedral, Father Hubert Champenois, explained last week that the volunteer was a “Rwandan who came to take refuge in France a few years ago”.
According to the rector, the volunteer is "serving an altar" and he had known him "for four or five years". "I have confidence in him as in all collaborators," he told AFP.
The voluntary worker was taken into police custody on July 18 a few hours after the fire and the investigation began, and was released the following evening. The investigators wished to question him because no sign of break-in had been observed on the accesses to the building in which three starting points of fire had been observed.
Within the framework of this investigation, "more than thirty people" were heard and twenty investigators of the judicial police were mobilized, with in particular the reinforcement of the central laboratory of the prefecture of police of Paris, in order to determine the cause. of the fire, according to the prosecutor.
The Rwandan was again arrested and taken into police custody on the morning of July 25, then presented in the evening to the Nantes prosecutor's office, which opened a judicial investigation, before being indicted and placed in pre-trial detention.
He faces for this offense "a 10-year prison sentence and 150,000 euros fine," Pierre Sennés said in an email sent overnight.
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