PARIS – A church volunteer was detained and charged on Sunday by French authorities, after he told investigators that he was responsible for an arson fire that severely damaged a 15th-century Gothic cathedral.
The man had been interrogated and then released after the July 18 fire that destroyed the organ, smashed the windows, and blackened the interior of the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the city of Nantes in western France.
Arrested again this weekend for more questions, the church volunteer admitted responsibility for the fire, his attorney, Quentin Chabert, said.
“He confessed to the accusations against him that, as the prosecutor indicated, are causing destruction and damage by fire,” the lawyer told France Info radio. “He regrets the facts. That is certain. He is in a kind of regret.”
The French media quoted the Nantes prosecutor as saying that Rwanda, 39, who had been entrusted with the task of locking up the cathedral, told the investigating judge that he lit three fires: in two cathedral organs and an electrical box. . His motives were unknown.
The prosecutor said the arson charge is punishable by a 10-year prison sentence and a fine of 150,000 euros ($ 175,000).
Collected immediately after the fire, held for more than a day, and then released, the man was arrested again on Saturday morning, based on evidence gathered by forensic police experts and a team of 20 investigators who questioned more of 30 people. The prosecutor said in a statement.
The fire broke the main windows between the two towers of the cathedral and destroyed its main organ. Dating from the 17th century, the organ was called the “soul of the cathedral” by the faithful.
The cathedral was built over five centuries and completed in 1891. The organ had previously survived a serious fire in 1972, which wiped out much of its wooden structures.
