France’s Interior Minister on Wednesday imposed a harsh penalty on a man who had been caught on camera lighting a cigarette at a war memorial in Paris.
The 47-year-old Moroccan immigrant, is to be stripped of his residency permit in France, the interior ministry announced, after being arrested on charges of violating a war memorial.
Video footage of him lighting a cigarette beneath the much-visited Arc de Triomphe sparked outrage after it was circulated.
“The man who desecrated the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by lighting a cigarette with the memorial flame was arrested in Paris for violating a burial site, tomb, urn, or monument erected in memory of the dead. He was taken into custody and admitted the facts,” France’s Interior Minister Retailleau wrote on X.
On Wednesday, Retailleau announced that the unidentified man had been stripped of his residency permit, Politico reported.
The Unknown Soldier War Memorial contains a flame and the tomb of a soldier killed in World War I under an arch of the Arc de Triomphe.
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