A church volunteer was detained and charged by French authorities Sunday, after he told investigators that he was responsible for an arson attack that badly damaged a 15th-century Gothic cathedral.
The prosecutor said the arson charge is punishable by a 10-year jail term and a fine of 150,000 euros .
Picked up immediately after the fire, held for over a day and then released, the man was detained again on Saturday morning, on the basis of evidence gathered by police forensic experts and a 20-strong team of investigators who questioned more than 30 people, the prosecutor said in a statement. The fire broke the main stained-glass windows between the cathedral's two towers and destroyed its main organ. Dating from the 17th century, the organ was called the"soul of the cathedral" by faithful.
The cathedral was built over five centuries and completed in 1891. The organ had previously survived a serious fire in 1972, which annihilated much of its wooden structures.
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