France honours gendarme who sacrificed his life in Islamist attack
Apr 16, 2018Colonel Arnaud Beltrame’s heroism has helped reassure a nation left shaken and in mourning after Moroccan-born Radouane Lakdim’s killing spree, an attack that rekindled a debate over how France deals with suspected militant Islamists. Tributes began with a minute’s silence in gendarme barracks across France, before Beltrame’s Tricolor-draped coffin was carried into the cobbled courtyard of Les Invalides, a former military hospital, where Macron solemnly addressed the nation. “To accept to die so the innocent can live: that is the essence of what it means to be a soldier,” he said. “Others, even many who are brave, would have wavered or hesitated.” After speaking, Macron posthumously awarded Beltrame the Legion of Honour, France’s highest order of merit. More than 240 people have been killed since early 2015 in France in attacks carried out by Islamist militants or individuals inspired by Islamist groups. Macron said France would prevail with calm against an “insidious enemy” that wanted to divide the French people and deprive them of their freedoms. Lakdim’s rampage began when he shot dead the occupant of a car he stole and fired on a group of police joggers, wounding one. He then headed to a supermarket in Trebes, east of the popular medieval tourist city of Carcassonne, where he killed an employee and a customer. Beltrame, 44, led the team of gendarmes who arrived first on the scene. He persuaded Lakdim to release a woman he was holding as a human shield, laying down his weapon and putting his mobile phone on a table with the line surreptitiously left open. When three shots later rang out, elite police stormed the building and shot dead Lakdim. Beltrame was found with bullet wounds to an arm and foot and a grave knife wound to the neck. He died the following morning in hospital. French President Emmanuel Macron honors the flag-drapped coffin of late Gendarmerie officer Colonel Arnaud Beltrame, who was killed by an Islamist militant after taking the place of a female hostage during a supermarket siege in Trebes, with the 'Commandeur de la... (Reuters)
