Nantes fire, confessed the culprit: he is the volunteer detained last week

He confessed to having set the fire at Nantes Cathedral, during which the major organ dating back to the 17th century was destroyed: he is the 39-year-old man, a volunteer on duty at the church (he had precisely the task of closing the building and had been working at Nantes Cathedral for about five years), who had been detained immediately after the fire as a suspect, and then released last Sunday. The man had been detained again yesterday morning, and tonight he made a full confession: for this, the man was arrested. This was made known by the prosecutor of the republic of Nantes, Pierre Sennès, in a note, saying that the new detention was due to “new developments in the investigation” and some “findings of the scientific police.”

The man now faces ten years’ imprisonment and a 150,000-euro fine (the charge is destruction and damage by fire). The 39-year-old man’s lawyer, Quentin Chabert, reached by local newspaper Presse-Océan, says the man “cooperated” and that “he bitterly regrets the facts, and the confession was a liberation for him. Today my client is tormented by remorse and is overwhelmed by the enormity of events.”

During the interrogation, the prosecutor’s office always makes known, the volunteer acknowledged that he had set the fire in three separate places(the three triggers immediately found by investigators): on the major organ, on the side organ, and on an electrical panel. During the fire, the major organ, dating from the 17th century but remodeled later, a painting by Hippolyte Flandrin (Lyon, 1809 - Rome, 1864), part of the wooden choir and the stained glass windows of the facade (some of which date back to the 16th century) were entirely destroyed.

The motive for the act remains to be clarified, Sennès said this morning in an interview with the leading local newspaper, Ouest France. The prosecutor let it be known that the investigating judge will have a psychiatric report carried out on the man, and that the motives he gave during questioning “are at the moment very superficial and still somewhat confused.”

Nantes fire, confessed the culprit: he is the volunteer detained last week

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