A former volunteer firefighter was sentenced on Wednesday by the Béziers criminal court to two years in prison, including one year suspended on probation.

He had caused two fires in early August, in the Hérault.

The 33-year-old was also banned from traveling to the department for five years.

The prosecutor, Camille Julla-Marcy, had requested a three-year prison sentence, including 18 months suspended.

On August 2, around 7 p.m., the Hérault firefighters intervened on a vegetation fire in the natural and agricultural area of ​​Pézenas.

The fire, extinguished in two hours, had spread over 500 m2 without causing any damage to homes.

The gendarmes were then alerted to the presence of an individual with suspicious behavior.

He had also been seen in the afternoon near a first start of fire, quickly circumscribed by the firefighters.

“A worrying step for a former firefighter”

Arrested on the day of the events when he was alcoholic, he had ended up recognizing, after his sobering up, being the author of the fire of the evening.

But he denied any responsibility in the first outbreak of fire.

A version that this former volunteer firefighter in Ardèche between 2008 and 2011, maintained on Wednesday before the court.

"He doesn't explain anything, but that doesn't make him an arsonist fascinated by fire," argued his lawyer, Michel-Pierre Raynaud-Bardon, pleading for clemency.

“He is part of a worrying process for a former firefighter, in a national context that must also be taken into account,” accused the prosecutor during her indictment.

Forty-eight people arrested in France for the fires this summer

According to a provisional report from the gendarmerie dated September 23, forty-eight people were arrested in France during this summer, marked by a record of burned areas, particularly in the Southwest.

Before Wednesday's judgment, twelve of them had already been sentenced: the heaviest sentence, two years in prison, was pronounced against a young man convicted of a series of fires in Gironde.

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