Col Arnaud Beltrame – gave his life for a hostage

Col Arnaud Beltrame, willingly took the place of a hostage during a standoff with a rampaging gunman.

Beltrame, 44, was a lieutenant colonel in the gendarmerie, a part of the French military that focuses on domestic policing.

 Previously  decorated for his bravery during operations in Iraq, he spent four years in the early 2000s in France’s Republican Guard, protecting the Elysee Palace in Paris.

The Elysee Palace announced Beltrame would receive a national honor for “giving his life to protect our fellow citizens,” according to reports in French media.

 His bravery earned him recognition as a hero in a country that has been shaken by many terrorist attacks in recent years.

It was this attack that was referenced in a series of Islamist terrorist attacks in the towns of Carcassonne and Trèbes in southern France a year later.

Shortly before 10 a.m. on Friday 23 March 2018, Redouane Lakdim, a 25-year-old French-Moroccan armed with a handgun, stopped a car on the outskirts of Carcassonne that was occupied by Renato Silva, of Portugal, and Jean Mazières.

Lakdim shot both occupants, killing Mazières and critically injuring Silva, then stole the car and drive off.

He appeared to wait outside a military barracks for soldiers, but then drove to a police barracks and attacked four police officers as they were jogging back to their barracks by shooting at and trying to run them over.

One officer was shot, the bullet narrowly missed his heart and broke a few ribs and punctured a lung.

Lakdim then sped off and drove 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) to Trèbes

At around 11 a.m. Lakdim entered the Super U market in Trèbes armed with a handgun, a hunting knife and three homemade bombs.

There were about fifty people inside.

He declared he was a soldier of Islamic State and  shot dead two people—a supermarket butcher and a customer—and took others hostage,ordering everyone to lie on the ground.

Most of those in the supermarket managed to flee and some hid in a fridge.

Hundreds of police and gendarmerie quickly arrived, cordoned off the area and helped evacuate people.

They found Lakdim holding several hostages, including a woman whom he used as a human shield.

A GIGN unit assembled near the supermarket and Interior Minister Gérard Collomb arrived.

The hostage taker demanded the release of Salah Abdeslam, a primary suspect in the November 2015 Paris attacks.

 During the standoff, he briefly came out of the supermarket, threatening to “blow everything up”, so Police brought Lakdim’s mother and two sisters to negotiate, unsuccessfully.

Police negotiated with Lakdim to release the hostages, and Arnaud Beltrame, a 44-year-old lieutenant colonel in the National Gendarmerie, offered to take the place of the final, female hostage, and Lakdim agreed.

Beltrame set his mobile phone on a table inside with the phone line open, so the police outside could listen in.

After a three-hour stand-off, Beltrame tried to disarm Lakdim and shouted “Assault! Assault!” loud enough to be heard through the phone.

As a result, Beltrame was shot three or four times and fatally stabbed.

GIGN operatives immediately stormed the supermarket at 2:40 p.m. , exchanged gunfire with the assailant, killing him two minutes later.

Two operatives were wounded.

Shortly after, police dogs went into the building, and an ambulance and helicopter arrived.

Beltrame  wed partner Marielle while on his death bed in a hugely moving ceremony performed in a hospital in Carcassonne.

Beltrame was praised by Interior Minister Collomb and others for his heroism,but later died in hospital of his injuries.

A priest identified only as Father Jean-Baptiste described how the couple had “spent some 30 hours preparing for their marriage ceremony”.

He added: “I gave him the sacrament of marriage, and the sacrament of the sick”, explaining the soldier was an “extremely intelligent and courageous man”.

Surgeons worked through the night to save him.

Autopsies found that Beltrame died from stab wounds to the throat.

France will never forget his heroism, his bravery, his sacrifice.”

Paying tribute, President Emmanuel Macron said of Col Beltrame, “In giving his life to bring to an end the murderous actions of a jihadist terrorist, he has fallen a hero.”

Colonel Beltrame was one of 16 people injured in the atrocity after the attacker, Moroccan Redouane Lakdim, 25, went on a deadly four-hour rampage.

His brother, Cedric told a French radio station “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.”

Paris counter-terrorism investigators took over the probe into the attack in Trebes and nearby Carcassonne.

Renato Silva survived being shot in the head by Lakdim before having his car stolen, but went into a coma.

In April, he came out of coma, but could not walk unassisted and suffered partial paralysis in the face and deafness in one ear.

Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa visited Silva in hospital.

With the police under fire over missed opportunities to prevent the attack, cops arrested a 17-year-old in connection with the atrocity, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins confirmed.

Molins also said a woman who “shared his [Lakdim’s] life” was taken into custody on the same grounds.

It has since emerged that Lakdim was known to French security services as a potential Islamist radical, but was not under surveillance at the time of his death.

Collomb described him as a “radicalised petty criminal and small-time drug dealer”.

President Macron rushed back from an EU summit in Brussels to Paris, where counter-terrorism investigators took over the investigation.

France has been on high alert since a series of extremist attacks in 2015 and 2016 that killed more than 200 people.

Macron said while France hadn’t had an attack in several months “the threat remains high”.

He described ongoing risks from “What we’re fighting is clandestine Islamic fundamentalism … which does its work out of sight, which preys on weak and unstable minds, and which on our soil corrupts and indoctrinates on a daily basis.”

Mr Macron  urged France to be vigilant, in the last three years, more than 240 people have been killed in attacks across France.

Col Beltrame became the seventh member of France’s security forces to be killed in such attacks since 2012.

UK PM Theresa May said the “sacrifice and courage” of the police officer would not be forgotten.

Col Beltrame was a highly-regarded member of the Gendarmerie Nationale and was described by France’s president as someone who “fought until the end and never gave up”.

He graduated in 1999 from France’s leading military academy in Saint Cyr and in 2003 became one of just a handful of candidates chosen to join the elite security response group GSIGN.

He was deployed to Iraq in 2005 and was later awarded the Cross for Military Valour for his peacekeeping work.

On his return to France, Col Beltrame joined the country’s Republican Guard and was tasked with protecting the presidential palace.

In 2017, he was named deputy chief of the Gendarmerie Nationale in the French region of Aude, home to the medieval town of Carcassonne.

As recently as December, Col Beltrame took part in a simulated terror attack on a local supermarket in the region.

President Emmanuel Macron said the officer symbolised the “French spirit of resistance”.

Col Beltrame’s widow , 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.”

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

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.

With full honour guard, Arnaud Beltrame’s coffin was brought from the Pantheon – the mausoleum for French heroes – through the Latin Quarter and along the quays of the Seine to the Invalides military museum.

It was a nation coming together to salute the ultimate beau geste, the noble gesture of a gendarme who gave his own life to save another’s.

During the eulogy, President Macron said while the name of the attacker would sink into oblivion, Arnaud Beltrame’s name would be remembered for ever.

He had joined the ranks of the country’s heroes.

Attacks in France Since 2012