Tricolore flies at half-mast as Macron hails ‘national hero’
France pays tribute to police officer who died saving a hostage in supermarket stand-off
FLAGS were flown at half-mast in gendarme stations across France yesterday as the country honoured police officer Arnaud Beltrame.
He was declared a national hero by President Emmanuel Macron after trading places with a woman being held hostage by an Islamist gunman.
“Arnaud Beltrame died in the service of the nation to which he had already given so much,” Mr Macron said. “In giving his life to end the deadly plan of a jihadi terrorist, he fell as a hero.”
The 44-year-old Lieutenant Colonel died in hospital in the early hours of Saturday after swapping himself for a hostage being held in a supermarket in the south-western town of Trèbes on Friday.
Unbeknown to his Morocco-born captor, who had by then killed three people in a shooting spree and wounded 16 more, he left his mobile phone on so police outside could hear what was happening. They stormed the building when they heard gunfire and shot the hostage-taker dead.
Mr Beltrame – who was shot and stabbed in the attack – was airlifted to a nearby hospital but died a few hours later. Tributes to the officer, who first took his place among the elite police special forces in 2003 and was decorated in 2007 after serving in Iraq, flooded in yesterday morning when the country awoke to the news of his death.
The president was among the first to respond, with a long statement listing the gendarme’s glittering career – which included four years handling security at the Elysée Palace – and saying he “deserved the respect and admiration of the entire nation”.
The officer’s name was the top trending hashtag on the French version of Twitter, with members of the public in France and around the world paying tribute to what many of them called a “true hero”.
The name of the 25-year-old Islamist hostage-taker, Redouane Lakdim, who claimed allegiance to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), was the second most-used term on Twitter.
Richard Lizurey, the director general of the Gendarmerie Nationale, ordered the French tricolore to be flown at half-mast at stations across the country to pay “solemn homage to the heroism of our comrade”.
Locals placed flowers outside the barracks in the town of Carcassonne where Mr Beltrame was based.
“At school, we were very scared,” read one note placed by the flowers and signed by a young girl named Lilou. “You were very brave.”
“He gave his life for someone else, for a stranger,” said the officer’s brother Cédric. “He departed as a hero.” Mr Beltrame’s mother, speaking late on Friday while her son was still in hospi-
‘In giving his life to end the deadly plan of a terrorist, he fell as a hero. He deserves the respect of the entire nation’
tal, said that when she heard a gendarme had swapped himself for a hostage, she “knew it was him”.
“He’s always been like that. He is someone … who would do anything for his country,” she said.
Mr Beltrame, who was married with no children, graduated from France’s Saint-Cyr military academy in 1999.
He later joined the elite GIGN police force that specialises in counter-terrorism and hostage rescue and trained to become a military freefall parachutist. Mr Beltrame worked as an adviser at the ecology ministry for three years before going back to field work last year in the Aude region, where his final intervention took place.
In December, Mr Beltrame had organised a training session in the region for just such a hostage situation. At the time, he armed his officers with paintball guns, according to La Dépêche du Midi, the local newspaper.
The identities of the three other people killed in Friday’s attack have also been made public.
Jean Mazières, a winemaker in his 60s, was the first to die in Carcassonne when Lakdim hijacked the car he was travelling in and shot him dead. The driver of the vehicle, a Portuguese national, was seriously injured.
Christian Medves was the butcher in the Super U shop in Trèbes. He was shot in the head when the attacker burst into the supermarket. Hervé Sosna, a retired bricklayer, was a customer standing next to Medves when he was gunned down.
Investigators probing Friday’s attack are keen to establish how the gunman, who was known to police for petty crime and drug dealing, got his weapon and became radicalised.
Police searching his home found notes referring to Isil that appear to be a final testament.
Two people had been detained over alleged links with a terrorist enterprise – one woman close to Lakdim and one friend of his, a 17-year-old male, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
Donald Trump yesterday support to Mr Macron.
He tweeted: “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of the horrible attack in France and we grieve the nation’s loss. We are with you.” sent his