Overview
- France’s Vendée assize court on January 22 sentenced Abayisenga to 30 years in prison for the August 2021 killing.
- Prosecutors had asked for life imprisonment with a 22-year security period and a permanent ban from French territory.
- Psychiatric experts offered conflicting views at trial, with one finding a simple alteration of discernment and another describing a possible psychosis.
- Father Olivier Maire, 61, died from violent blows to the head at the mission house where both men lived, and Abayisenga reported to the gendarmerie the next morning.
- Abayisenga, a Rwandan national who arrived in 2012 and received multiple OQTF orders, was previously sentenced to four years in the Nantes cathedral fire case.