Hodei Ciarra Docampo is accused of setting fire to the town hall Credit Max Stephens International Crime Correspondent. Neil Johnston Senior news reporter, in Paris 7:39pm BST Hodei Ciarra Docampo only had to turn to his father for advice on how to burn down the 143-year-old town hall in Limoges The 34-year-old “ultra-Left” agitator was arrested by French special forces at his parents’ home three days after allegedly setting the building alight Wearing a black balaclava, ski goggles and a bucket hat, the suspect was filmed allegedly tending to the blaze as it spread from the ground floor to the belfry. Arson appears to be something of a family tradition in the Ciarra Docampo household.

His father, Fernando Ciarra, a 70-year-old Basque separatist, was sentenced to three years in prison last April for arson attacks in Limoges, according to the French regional newspaper La Dépêche, and an investigation by The Objective, a Spanish online newspaper.

He is said to have burned eight vehicles belonging to Enedis, an electricity company, in February 2020 and carried out attacks on a broadcast station and mobile phone tower.

The latest act of arson in Limoges saw the neo-renaissance clock tower collapse in a ball of flames in front of a baying crowd, encapsulating the devastation unleashed by more than half a million rioters across France since Saturday.

Guillaume Guérin, the mayor of Limoges, quickly labelled Ciarra Docampo as the alleged “mastermind” of the attack.

Prosecutors said Ciarra Docampo, who has links to the group Les Soulèvements de la Terre (The Rise of the Earth), was on a terror watchlist and convicted of assaulting a police officer two years ago during a protest at a wood pellet factory.

At 6am on Tuesday morning, armed police from Raid, France’s elite tactical unit, broke down the door of his family home in the village of Bussière-Boffy, 25 miles away from Limoges, and arrested him. Ciarra Docampo faces up to 20 years in prison if he is convicted.

Prosecutors do not believe the town hall’s destruction was the work of a single overzealous protester, but that it was deliberately targeted by an organised far-Left group.

Mr Guérin said: “What happened is unacceptable. The involvement of the far-Left has been clear from the start in this fire.

“You don’t destroy a two-hundred-year-old building in a few hours with a box of matches and a lighter.”He claimed they brought fireworks, mortars, and battering rams to break down the building’s doors. “You don’t just carry such items around in a backpack,” he said.

France’s intelligence agencies and counter-terror police are assessing how much the nationwide riots which began as student protests, were infiltrated by members of the black bloc, an umbrella term for far-Left violent anarchists.

Its members are a loose assortment of extreme-Left organisations without any leadership or hierarchy.

They frequently clash with police and target symbols of wealth and capitalism such as banks and insurance companies.

Security experts have estimated that around 5,000 black bloc or far-Left violent actors were on the ground during the riots in Paris, Marseilles, Lyons and Limoges The 19th century town hall will need complete rebuilding Getty Images/SDIS 87 Jean-Yves Camus, a political scientist and expert on extremism, stressed that the violence was planned and involved many non-French nationals.

“It is not a political group, it is a bunch of anarchists clad in black who act together with the demonstration and with the intent of violently confronting the police,” he said. “They are really treated as a threat by the intelligence community.

“Apparently on October 17 people were speaking English and German during the riots, it’s a very strong possibility people came from Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland to take part in what was a planned demonstration.

“There was a plan, there was an exchange of information, those people did not simply get a train to Paris and join the demo [by chance].”Limoges town hall survived two world wars but was destroyed on Saturday night Getty Images/PASCAL LACHENAUD Questions have also been raised by commentators about whether hostile states were seeking to exploit the destabilisation and violence for political gain.

Dr Elias Forneris, a French citizen and head of research editorial at the defence think-tank Rusi, said: “Russian and Iranian actors would gain from the chaos.

“Back in autumn 2018, there were already questions about whether Russian bots were amplifying the Yellow Vests movement on“Social media amplification would be easy to execute. Direct interference is more difficult and would require a great scale to make any impact, in movements involving hundreds of thousands of protesters.”