BERTRAND CANTAT, the lead singer of the French rock band Noir Desir, was jailed for eight years yesterday for killing his actress companion in a jealous rage over a telephone text message.

A three-judge panel rejected defence arguments that Cantat, 40, had no intention of killing Marie Trintignant, 41, when the couple had a fight in a hotel room in Lithuania last year.

Vilmantas Gaidelis, the presiding judge of the court in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, said: “The guilt of the accused is unquestionable. He did not want the consequences (of the beating), but they occurred.”

Cantat, who remains a hero to many fans, remained impassive as the verdict was read out. His lawyers said that he would probably appeal. Lawyers for Nadine Trintignant, the mother of his victim, said that she found the sentence equitable and did not plan to use her right of appeal unless Cantat did so. Marie Trintignant’s three children by previous partners may now seek civil damages against the multimillionaire singer.

Mme Trintignant, who is a film director and wife of Jean-Louis Trintignant, a film idol of the postwar years, has waged a fierce campaign in the media against the singer, depicting him as a murderer and liar. The story of the love affair of the rock idol and the film star has riveted France since their fight in the heat of the summer over telephone text messages from their former spouses. Many sympathisers have depicted Cantat, a man with a reputation for sensitivity and left-wing sympathies, as something of a tragic victim. Feminists and campaigners against the abuse of women see the episode as a banal case of domestic violence. Cantat could have been sentenced to 15 years for deliberate homicide, but the court took account of the extreme remorse that he showed from moments after the hotel room fight.

Explaining how he had delivered four hard slaps to his companion’s face, he told the court: “Everything happened very fast. Never, never did I want things to happen that way. This hand should never have risen. And I do not accept myself having raised this hand. I know that I can do nothing. I know that I can only ask forgiveness as I have done since the beginning.

“We lived an extraordinary moment, I loved Marie with all my being. I loved her and I’ll always love her. I think of her each second and I’ll always think of her. I can’t erase her from my memory.”

Observers at the trial said that Cantat had cut a sympathetic figure in the court but also came across as immature. “The hearing was given the image of an emotionally immature fortysomething who was carried away by the ideal of passionate love as if he had remained an adolescent,” wrote a court reporter in Le Figaro.

Marie Trintignant, who had played a string of roles depicting brutalised women during her career, was in Lithuania making a film directed by her mother at the time of her death. Cantat has been held at the tsarist-era Lukiskes prison since his arrest in July.

Prosecutors had asked the court to send Cantat to prison for nine years, while his lawyers asked for the charges to be reduced to reckless manslaughter, an offence carrying a maximum penalty of four years. Although Cantat is to be moved from a detention centre to one of Vilnius’s two prisons, he is expected to be transferred within months to complete his sentence in a French jail.

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Afghanistan News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• Henning Mankell: ‘If Wallander was alive, I wouldn’t be a friend of his’
• Secret society's skull and crossbones for sale
• Nigerian leader vanishes after medical treatment