Slain cop hailed as a symbol of ‘French resistance’

PRESIDENTEmmanuelMacron on Wednesday hailed a policeman who sacrificed his life in an Islamist attack as a symbol of the “French spirit of resistance” and urged the nation to be vigilant in the face of an “insidious” jihadist threat.

“The name of his attacker will be forgotten, but the name of Arnaud Beltrame will live on,” Macron told a national ceremony to honour the officer, one of four victims of Friday’s shooting spree in southwestern France.

Macron vowed to ensure “he will not have died in vain”.

“His example will remain etched in French hearts,” the president told hundreds gathered in the rain at the historic Invalides military museum and hospital in central Paris.

Beltrame, a 44-year-old member of the gendarmerie military police force, died offering to take the place of a female checkout worker whom attacker Radouane Lakdim was using as a human shield at a supermarket in the town of Trebes.

Lakdim, who claimed allegiance to Islamic State, had already shot dead the passenger of a car he hijacked in nearby Carcassonne, before driving to the supermarket and killing two more people there.

Beltrame hoped to be able to negotiate with the 25-year-old, but Lakdim stabbed him in the throat and the officer died of his wounds the next morning.

Thousands of people lined the streets as Beltrame’s funeral cortege made its way through Paris for the ceremony.

“It’s important for me to be here to pay tribute to all the police officers who protect us on a daily basis and risk their lives for us,” said 64-year-old Andree.

Beltrame was posthumously made a Commander of the Legion of Honour and promoted to the rank of colonel.

His widow, Marielle, and other family members were also at the ceremony, along with relatives of Lakdim’s other victims, including four people wounded in the shooting spree.

Relatives have said it was typical of Beltrame, who trained as a paratrooper and served in Iraq, to put others first.

“You behaved in your last moments just as you behaved throughout your whole life: as a patriot, as a good man, as a man with a big heart,” his brother Damien wrote on Facebook.

Flowers have been piling up outside his local gendarmerie base in Carcassonne, where a note on one bouquet read: “Thanks to you, Arnaud, France is beautiful.”