The man was also banned from carrying a weapon and from staying in the Loire-Atlantique department for a period of five years.
The arsonist of the cathedral of Nantes (Loire-Atlantique) in 2020 was sentenced, Wednesday March 29, to four years in prison by the criminal court, which retained an alteration in the discernment of this man at the time of the facts.
The public prosecutor had requested six years in prison if the alteration of discernment was retained and eight years in the opposite case against Emmanuel Abayisenga, 42, of Rwandan nationality. The court added to the conviction a ban on carrying a weapon and on staying in the Loire-Atlantique department for a period of five years.
Indicted in another case
The man, psychologically fragile, was prosecuted for degradation and destruction of the property of others by a means dangerous for people. His lawyer, Me Meriem Abkoui, who had argued for the abolition of discernment at the time of the fire, nevertheless believes that “the question of his criminal liability remains”.
“There are a lot of hazards in his answers which sometimes lack coherence”, she said after the judgment, saying she was waiting for the results of the psychiatric expertise in another procedure. Emmanuel Abayisenga is indeed indicted for the assassination of Father Olivier Maire in August 2021 in Vendée. His trial could be held at the end of 2024 according to his lawyer. “It is indeed a vast anger and a feeling of revenge linked to his administrative situation which is at the origin of this conscious and methodical firing”, argued prosecutor Véronique Wester-Ouisse.
The great organ destroyed in the fire
The defendant admitted the facts at the start of the hearing, explaining that he had gone to the cathedral in the early morning to pray in order to “find peace” but that he then had “lost control” passing in front of a part of the building where he had suffered a violent attack on December 31, 2018.“Since that day, I regret what happened”added Emmanuel Abayisenga. “I wanted to give my contribution to the country that welcomed me, but it didn’t happen that way”, he added before asking “pardon”.
The three sources of fire lit in the cathedral completely destroyed the great organ dating from 1619, the keyboard of the choir organ and an 1836 painting by Flandrin representing Saint-Clair curing the blind. The lawyer for the State, owner of the building, quantifies the whole of the damage at more than 40 million euros.