Overview
- A large night fire destroyed much of the Espace Michel-Serres on the Mont-Saint-Aignan campus during protests on Saturday, 17 October, with no injuries reported.
- Investigators used campus video-surveillance to identify a male undergraduate and arrested him on Tuesday, after which he remained silent during custody.
- The student was presented to an examining judge and formally placed under investigation for "destruction by fire" on Thursday, 22 October, then remanded to pretrial detention.
- The building, rehabilitated in 2020 for €1.1 million and home to student services and two amphitheatres, will need several months of work and the total repair cost has not yet been estimated.
- The public prosecutor says the suspect did not act alone and the ongoing inquiry will seek accomplices and assess whether further arrests or charges are needed, a development that could affect campus security and the academic schedule.