Asylum seeker admits burning French cathedral
THE lawyer of a volunteer at a Gothic cathedral in western France’s Nantes town has said he has confessed to setting the building on fire that severely damaged its 17th-century organ and blew out stained glass.
The 39-year-old accused, an asylum seeker from Rwanda who has lived in France for several years, was arrested earlier this month after laboratory analysis determined that arson was the likely cause of the blaze, the local prosecutor’s office said.
“My client has cooperated,” lawyer Quentin Chabert told the Presse-Ocean newspaper yesterday, without elaborating on motives for attempting to burn down the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.
“He bitterly regrets his actions . . . My client is consumed with remorse,” Chabert said.
Prosecutors opened an arson inquiry after the early morning fire on July 18 after finding that it broke out in three different places in the church, which the volunteer had locked up the night before.
He was taken in for questioning the next day but later released without charge, with the cathedral’s rector saying, “I trust him like I trust all the helpers.”
But Nantes prosecutor Pierre Sennes said he had been charged with “destruction and damage by fire” and faces up to 10 years in prison and $175 000 in fines.
“He admitted during his first appearance for questioning before the investigating judge that he set three fires in the cathedral: at the main organ, the smaller organ, and the electrical panel,” Sennes said.
The blaze came 15 months after the devastating fire at the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, which raised questions about the security risks for other historic churches across France.
While firefighters were able to contain the Nantes blaze after just two hours and save the cathedral’s main structure, the famed organ, which dated from 1621 and had survived the French Revolution and World War II bombardment, was destroyed.
Also lost were priceless artefacts and paintings, including a work by the 19th-century artist Hippolyte Flandrin and stained glass windows that contained remnants of 16th-century glass.
Work on the cathedral began in 1434 and continued over the following centuries until 1891.
The French government said it will ensure the cathedral’s restoration, though few elements of the main organ are likely to be saved, said Philippe Charron, head of the regional DRAC state heritage agency. — AFP
A CAPE Town man is on a ventilator in intensive care while a woman is suffering from “excruciating” burns after being petrol bombed by protesters near Cape Town’s N2 highway.
The pair were seriously injured during an ambush in Mfuleni on Tuesday in one of numerous violent protests which unfolded in Cape Town last week.
A crowd surrounded and attacked their vehicle.
The man is in the intensive care unit at Tygerberg Hospital following the petrol bomb attack.
The two, who have asked not to be named in fear of their safety, are colleagues. The vehicle had been driven by the woman’s husband, who escaped uninjured.
After their ordeal, the woman’s employer said she had sustained wounds to her thighs, head as well as her hand, which “basically... has no skin”.
“The fact that they didn’t all die, is a miracle,” she said. “The petrol bomb exploded in the vehicle [a transit van] and [the man] jumped out of the window to try and get out. Glass pieces, fire, smoke everywhere.”
The woman’s dress had also burnt and the front of the van had been in flames. “Yet they could drive to the hospital. The man] sitting at the window got the worst with inhalation and head wounds... and hand wounds, trying to get rid of the fire in the vehicle.”
The woman’s husband may not have sustained physical injuries, but was traumatised by what had happened, the employer said.
The husband said the attack was traumatic, and described that day as a “sorrowful one” in which his wife sustained third degree burns by “homemade hand grenades”.
Yesterday, the employer said the woman had been taken back to hospital as the wounds were “not looking well”. “She is in excruciating pain. I almost passed out just sitting nearby, seeing her pain. We were just praying, while they were cleaning the wounds. It was very, very painful, and very traumatic.”
The Western Cape government this week said it condemned the “violent and destructive protests and land invasions… which have resulted in injuries to our citizens, damage to property, and which will impact government’s ability to provide key services to our most vulnerable residents going forward”. — Sapa