The Greek Orthodox priest shot earlier this month in the French city of Lyon was the victim of a jealous husband rather than an Islamic terrorist, French prosecutors said on Saturday.
Nikolaos Kakavelakis, 52, was shot twice with a sawed-off shotgun outside his church on October 31, in what police feared was a copycat attack, coming as it did just three days after three people were murdered in a terror attack at a church in Nice, with one of them beheaded.
But according to prosecutors, the priest put the police on the trail of his attacker as soon as he came out of a coma on Tuesday, telling them he believed he had been shot by the “jealous husband” of one of his conquests.
A 40-year Georgian man, who the Le Parisien newspaper named as “Giorgi P,” admitted to carrying out the attack after he was arrested on Friday.
He insists, however, that he had not wanted to kill Kakavelakis, who was having an affair with his 35-year-old Russian wife, named by the newspaper as Lela K.
The priest had announced that he was resigning from the church one month earlier.
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