A man was arrested last Thursday in the 6th arrondissement of Paris near the Saint-Sulpice church. Placed in police custody, he is suspected of having wanted to crash into Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral aboard a small plane.
A former airline pilot, the suspect usually drives a Cessna-type touring aircraft in his spare time.
It was his relatives who alerted the authorities according to the newspaper Le Parisien. “You will see, in the coming days, there is a plane which will crash into Notre-Dame”, he would have declared to his friend, according to Le Figaro.
Aged in his fifties, the former pilot is said to be suffering from serious psychatric problems. He was to undergo an examination after which he could be interned.
During the search of his hotel room in Paris, no indication of a planned attack on Notre-Dame cathedral was noted.