Fire at Nantes Cathedral: Rwandan volunteer sentenced to four years in prison

Emmanuel Abayisenga, a 42-year-old Rwandan national, was sentenced Wednesday, March 29 to four years in prison by the city's criminal court, which found that the man's discernment was impaired at the time of the events. Tried for destruction and damage to the property of others, he admitted the facts at the beginning of the hearing. © SEBASTIEN SALOM-GOMIS - AFP

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Emmanuel Abayisenga, a 42-year-old Rwandan national, was sentenced Wednesday, March 29 to four years in prison by the city's criminal court, which found that the man's discernment was impaired at the time of the events. Tried for destruction and damage to the property of others, he admitted the facts at the beginning of the hearing.

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Frail figure lost in a red anorak, Emmanuel Abayisenga advances painfully, looking disoriented. The president first returns to the facts: the fire set in three points of the cathedral on July 18, 2020, but also this email, sent three hours before the fire, which quickly made him the main suspect.

The Rwandan, a volunteer sacristan, let show, recalls the court, "his bitterness and distress to have reached the end of his efforts to cancel an obligation to leave the territory". An "injustice" for Emmanuel Abayisenga, who also wrote that the violent beating he had suffered one evening in 2018 by closing the cathedral after installing sound equipment should have weighed in his favor.

With a very small "yes", the accused admits to having set fire, but his hearing problems, his back and forth between French and Kinyarwanda and his obvious anxiety make the interrogation laborious.

Invaded by traumatic memories

By dint of delicacy, the president gleans some explanations. The man said that morning, he went to pray to calm down, but had to stop because of his incontinence, a sequela of the assault. And it was in passing, precisely, near the place where he had been attacked, that traumatic memories invaded him. I lost control, whispers the accused, who says he attacked three sound elements, including the organs because he associated them with the assault. It was not, he said, an angry gesture related to the deportation decision. "I'm sorry. I wanted to give my contribution to the country that welcomed me, but it didn't happen like that. Sorry," he whispers.

Earlier, the accused had suddenly admitted to lying about his youth in Rwanda and inventing traumas that he had not suffered. The court finally found that his discernment had been impaired at the time of his act, in connection with the trauma of his assault. He also rejected the prosecutor's request, which had requested a permanent ban from French territory. Because Emmanuel Abayisenga is indicted in another case, the murder of a priest a year after the fire, but also, stressed the president, because "the court does not have elements to assess what would be his situation in Rwanda".

► Read also: Fire in the cathedral of Nantes: the confession of a Rwandan volunteer

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