French police were on Wednesday considering whether to charge a man who was arrested for lighting a cigarette using the eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
France's Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau, said a man was arrested on Tuesday for violating a burial site, tomb, urn or monument erected in memory of the dead on Monday.
"He was taken into custody and admitted the facts," Retailleau added.
A video of a man stooping and lighting his cigarette from the flame at the tomb was widely shared on social media, with French newspaper Le Figaro reporting that it was filmed by a Latvian tourist and initially shared on TikTok.
"You cannot ridicule French remembrance and get away with it," Patricia Miralles, minister for veterans and remembrance, posted on social media in reference to the incident. "This is an insult to our dead, to our history and to our nation."
National Rally MP Katiana Levavasseur, who shared the video of the incident, wrote: "This flame is not just a symbol of remembrance: it embodies the sacrifice of those who gave their lives for our freedom. To desecrate it in this way is to trample on respect and honour."
The tomb, under the Arc de Triomphe at the top of the Champs Elysées, contains the remains of an unidentified soldier killed in the First World War and commemorates France’s war dead.
Every year on 11 November, the French president lays a wreath at the tomb to mark the armistice that ended the First World War.
(with newswires)
