French police have detained a 20-year-old Afghani migrant after the president of a pro-migrant activist group was bludgeoned to death in his sleep.

Jean Dussine, 63, the president of Itinérance Cherbourg — an organisation which helps migrants and asylum seekers a French port city located on the English Channel — was killed in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

The migrant suspected of committing the act allegedly broke into Dussine’s house and beat him to death with an iron rod, while the activist was sleeping, according to the French news outlet Ouest. A subsequent report by La Manche Libre reports the 21-year-old migrant confessed to the killing.

The prosecutor in the case, Yves Le Clair told the AFP that the Afghani migrant is believed to have entered into the house with the intention of murdering the pro-migrant activist.

“There are no traces of reciprocal violence. You would think that Jean Dussine did not have time to defend himself,” said Le Clair.

Doussine was the head of the pro-migrant group since 2016 and had been personally housing migrants in his home for years. The six migrants that were living with him at the time of his murder are said to have tried to restrain his attacker but were not able to come to his aid in time.

The mayor of Cherbourg, Benoît Arrivé said that Doussine was a “warm, benevolent and responsible man, entirely devoted to the cause of these men and women whom he cared for tirelessly”:

“With his team, he worked to welcome migrants, to give them decent living conditions, to teach them French, to support them in their new life. So that they integrate into our society,” he added.

Anna Pic, the first federal secretary of the Socialist Party, said that he “was a man of great humanism who put himself at the service of others and the collective interest”.

The port city in which Doussine’s group operated, Cherbourg, has recently become a hub for migrants attempting to cross the English Channel to claim asylum in the UK.

In November, sixteen migrants believed to be from the Middle East were found in a shipping container that had come from Cherbourg, during an inspection by officials in Ireland.

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