Two men have admitted to desecrating and vandalising 63 graves in a French cemetery earlier this month, claiming the act was an offering to Satan to help their musical careers.
The pair, aged 23 and 24, were arrested last week on the 18th of August and later confessed to the crime, with one of the men, a Cameroonian migrant named Fabien, saying that the destruction in the cemetery, which took place on August 9th in Lannemezan was a “pact with the devil to succeed in music.”
The migrant admitted to being in contact with a marabout, traditionally a Muslim scholar in Africa, in Mali who he claimed advised him “to remove what represents God and replace him with 666,” and to “make offerings to being opposed to God,” La République des Pyrénées reports.
The other man involved, named Jordan, said Fabien wanted to “invoke demons,” although it was pointed out that he participated in “incantations” himself.
The two men are said to be well-known to police in the Hautes-Pyrénées department and were arrested after one of the pair dropped his mobile phone at the scene of the crime and another left blood after injuring himself during the rampage.
The total damage to the cemetery is estimated at around 30,000 and prosecutors are looking for a prison term of 18 months for Fabien and 12 months for Jordan. In court, a statement of Fabien’s was read stating he could not rule out reoffending.
The attack on the cemetery is just the latest act of anti-christian vandalism or violence in France, which sees an estimated three anti-Christian attacks per day, according to a report released last year by the Central Criminal Intelligence Service (SCRC) of the gendarmerie.
Earlier this month in the commune of Niort, three statues were destroyed in repeated vandalism attacks at a historic church first built int he 11th century.
In May, an attack on a church in Bergerac in the Dordogne region saw thieves steal consecrated hosts, with L’Observatoire de la Christianophobie, a group dedicated to cataloguing anti-Christian attacks, noting that it too, may have been linked to Satanism.
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