A man suspected of having placed an improvised explosive device in the Saint-Étienne cathedral in Toulouse on Friday, without causing any casualties, was arrested and placed in police custody.
At this stage, the terrorist track is not privileged, according to a source close to the file, and the investigation was entrusted to the PJ of Toulouse.
“The person suspected of having left the package has been arrested and placed in police custody, he will be heard,” Toulouse public prosecutor Samuel Vuelta Simon told AFP.
He was known to the police for driving while intoxicated, contempt of an officer, narcotics and had been “implicated in other cases and twice declared criminally irresponsible”, he added.
According to a source close to the case, the suspected man is 46 years old and was involved on March 23 in a suspicious package story in a Toulouse metro station.
Around 8:30 a.m., the Saint-Étienne cathedral in Toulouse was evacuated during mass.
A few moments earlier, a man wearing a cap, taken for a delivery man by the sexton, crossed the nave to deposit a package at the foot of the altar.
As he ran away, he bumped into the sexton who was trying to hold him back. The monk asked the faithful to evacuate the cathedral, which adjoins the prefecture, and alerted the police.
– “No casualties” –
The suspect was searched for several hours before being located in Balma, a residential suburb of Toulouse.
“Thanks to the mobilization of the national, municipal and Tisséo police (public transport company of the Toulouse conurbation, editor’s note), the suspect was arrested without any victim to deplore. The video protection takes on its full meaning and proves its effectiveness” , wrote on Twitter the mayor of Toulouse Jean-Luc Moudenc.
The surroundings of the cathedral were cordoned off while the deminers neutralized the explosive device which did not contain a detonator.
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, who had announced around 9:30 a.m. on Twitter a “police operation in the city center of Toulouse” asking to avoid the sector, clarified later that “no victim” was to be deplored.
The package looked like “an improvised explosive device, a priori without a firing device”, he said in a statement to the Cnews channel.
The 40-year-old left “a white packet that was between 20 and 25 cm wide”, according to the description of Father Jean-Jacques Rouchi, who celebrated mass in front of around 40 people.
“Mixed artisanal products were contained in a wooden box. (The suspect) will be questioned by the PJ, who will try to understand his motivations,” said the Toulouse prosecutor.
“I strongly condemn this act and regret that in our country, a place of prayer as well as its faithful are targeted by an explosive device”, reacted the Archbishop of Toulouse Guy de Kerimel in a press release, calling on Catholics “to celebrate the Holy Week with confidence”.