France honours policeman who gave life to save hostage


FE Team | Published: March 28, 2018 20:32:39 | Updated: March 29, 2018 15:44:42


France honours policeman who gave life to save hostage

Tributes have been paid across France to the police officer who died after he offered himself in exchange for a hostage in an Islamist attack.

The coffin carrying Lt Col Arnaud Beltrame was driven in heavy rain through Paris, where hundreds of people joined a national memorial service.

President Emmanuel Macron said the officer, who was 44, symbolised the "French spirit of resistance".

Three other people were also killed in Friday's attacks in southern France.

Col Beltrame's widow and his friends, family and colleagues attended a ceremony at Les Invalides in the French capital.

"To be willing to die so that innocent people continue to live, this is the heart of a soldier's promise," Mr Macron said in his eulogy as the coffin draped in the French flag laid in the cobbled courtyard.

"To be ready to give your own life because nothing is more important than the life of a citizen, this is the ultimate effect of the transcendence he bore."

In the service, also attended by several former French presidents, Mr Macron awarded the officer France's highest accolade, the Legion d'Honneur.

Earlier, a minute's silence was observed at all police stations across France, and flags were lowered to half-mast on public buildings.

The officer was a highly regarded member of the Gendarmerie Nationale, and friends and relatives have remembered his sense of duty and generosity.

His brother Cedric told a French radio station on Saturday: "He gave his life for strangers. He must have known that he didn't really have a chance. If that doesn't make him a hero, I don't know what would."

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