France stood in silence to honour the officer who was killed in ISIS hostage siege

France today stood in silence to honour the hero police officer murdered by an ISIS terrorist during a supermarket siege last week.

Lieutenant-Colonel Arnaud Beltrame, 44, was stabbed in the throat and shot repeatedly after taking the place of a female hostage during the siege in Trebes, east of the popular medieval tourist city of Carcassonne, last Friday.

Today, his coffin was carried in a procession from Paris’ Pantheon to a ceremony at Hotel des Invalides, where French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a eulogy and posthumously awarded Lt. Col Beltrame the Legion of Honor.

Tributes paid to the policeman included one from his wife, who he married on his deathbed on Saturday, who said his brave sacrifice was ‘the act of a policeman and the act of a Christian’.

n the cobbled courtyard of Les Invalides, President 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.’

Three former presidents, Francois Hollande, Nicolas Sarkozy and Valery Giscard d’Estaing, were also in attendance at the ceremony, as well as several senior politicians.

Today’s national homage includes a minute’s silence in French police stations and myriad events in schools that both honour Lt. Col. Beltrame’s memory and provide a focal point for national grief after last Friday’s killing spree.

Some 2,000 high school students and scores of police attended the Paris event that began as gendarmes sang the French revolutionary anthem the Marseillaise in the stone courtyard of the French Interior Ministry.

Also present today is his wife, Marielle. The couple were devout Catholics, and were married by a priest as Lt Col Beltrame lay dying in hospital on Saturday.

Lt Col Beltrame reportedly kept a picture of himself and Marielle in his hat, and the family have said the hat, with the picture in, will rest with him in his coffin.

It has now emerged that a full five bullets were fired from Lt. Col. Beltrame’s Sig Sauer 9 mm service pistol after three hours in captivity.

The evidence points to a struggle with terrorist Radouane Lakdim, 26, after the terrorist discovered that the policeman was carrying a gun.

A total of four men were murdered in the attacks around Carcassonne before Lakdim himself was gunned down by special forces GIGN police.

Speaking on Wednesday, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb confirmed the security services were about to reduce the surveillance on Lakdim, who was on a radicalization watch list.

‘Ultimately no one thought that there would be a hasty attack,’ he said.

Lakdim’s girlfriend was also on police radar. Investigating judges on Tuesday filed preliminary charges of criminal terrorist association against the woman, identified only as Marine P., according to a judicial official.

The prosecutor said the girlfriend denied involvement in Lakdim’s plans. But Molins said she posted online a Quran verse ‘indicating that infidels were promised to hell’ just a few hours before the attack.

Lt. Col. Beltrame had left his phone on inside the supermarket after taking the place of a woman checkout assistant identified only as Julie.

Source: Daily Mail