{"id":5887,"date":"2020-07-27T12:44:31","date_gmt":"2020-07-27T12:44:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsnewsforyou.com\/?p=5887"},"modified":"2020-07-27T12:44:31","modified_gmt":"2020-07-27T12:44:31","slug":"macron-hails-french-resistance-spirit-of-heroic-gendarme-who-swapped-himself-for-hostage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=5887","title":{"rendered":"Macron hails French resistance spirit of heroic gendarme who swapped himself for hostage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>President Emmanuel Macron led a national ceremony on Wednesday\u00a0morning paying tribute to a heroic policeman who died after swapping with a female hostage during a jihadist attack.<\/p>\n<p>Lieutenant-Colonel Arnaud Beltrame, 44, was was killed along with three others in the shooting spree last Friday in the southwestern towns of Carcassonne and nearby Trebes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHis greatness has stunned France,\u201d Mr Macron told family members, hundreds of dignitaries and \u201cbrothers in arms\u201d at a solemn ceremony at Paris\u2019 Invalides near Napoleon\u2019s tomb. \u201cThe intolerable can never win the day,\u201d said the president.<\/p>\n<p>His act was the epitome of France\u2019s \u201cspirit of resistance\u201d against Islamist barbarity, he added.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Beltrame who had been part of an elite unit, had taken the place of a female employee held as a final hostage in a supermarket by 25-year-old gunman Radouane Lakdim, who pledged allegiance to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<noscript><\/noscript><figcaption>\nEmmanuel Macron places his hands on the flag-draped coffin of Lieutenant-Colonel Arnaud BeltrameCredit:<br \/>\nPHILIPPE LOPEZ\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Mr Macron posthumously made the slain gendarme the commander of the Legion of Honour. The president placed France\u2019s highest award on Lt Col Beltrame\u2019s coffin draped in the French flag with his military cap laid upon it.<\/p>\n<p>France has lost more than 240 lives to jihadists over the past three years, but this attack was the country&#8217;s worst since Mr Macron became president last May.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier, police stations paused for a minute&#8217;s silence.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<noscript><\/noscript><figcaption>\nSoldiers carry the coffin of Lt Col Arnaud BeltrameCredit:<br \/>\nAP Photo\/Christophe Ena<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The Islamist assailant had also shot dead the passenger of a car he hijacked in Carcassonne and two people in the supermarket he had besieged in Trebes.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Beltrame took the place of the woman Lakdim was using as a human shield, but the Islamist shot the gendarme and slit his throat, leading police to intervene and shoot the attacker dead.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<noscript><\/noscript><figcaption>\nLt Col Arnaud Beltrame offered himself as a hostage in the jihadist attackCredit:<br \/>\nLUDOVIC MARIN\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>According to<em> Le Parisien<\/em>, it appears Mr Beltrame may have died after trying to disarm the assailant, who may have used his own weapon against him.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Macron said the gunman&#8217;s\u00a0disregard for human life mirrored that of the murderer of Mireille Knoll, an 85-year old Holocaust survivor found dead in her Paris flat last Friday.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<noscript><\/noscript><figcaption>\nRepublican Guards and cadets from the joint-army military school carried the coffinCredit:<br \/>\nLudovic Marin\/AFP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Two men have been charged with her killing, which investigators are treating as anti-Semitic.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The pair attacked \u201can innocent and vulnerable woman because she was Jewish and who thus profaned our sacred values and our memory,\u201d said Mr Macron.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<noscript><\/noscript><figcaption>\nPolice in Rotterdam observe a minute of silence in memory of Lt Col BeltrameCredit:<br \/>\nROBIN UTRECHT\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A solemn march will be held this evening in memory, but the event was hit with controversy after France\u2019s main Jewish umbrella group, Crif, said far-Left and Right leaders were not welcome. Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc M\u00e9lenchon say they will attend regardless, while the victim&#8217;s son said it was wrong to ban people.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Macron&#8217;s government has meanwhile come under fire from Right-wing opponents who claim that the attack could have been prevented.<\/p>\n<p>Lakdim had been on a list of suspected extremists since 2014 and was being monitored.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<noscript><\/noscript><figcaption>\nGendarmes escorted the coffinCredit:<br \/>\nLAURENTETIENNE LAURENT\/AFP\/Getty Images\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>He had been summoned by anti-terror police for questioning earlier this month, but G\u00e9rard Collomb, the interior minister confirmed on Wednesday that agents had decided to lower surveillance a notch before the attack.<\/p>\n<p>He said &quot;ultimately no one thought that there would be a hasty attack&quot; by Lakdim, a Moroccan-born French resident with dual nationality. How could they know he would act hours after taking a child to school, he asked.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<noscript><\/noscript><figcaption>\nThe solemn funeral ceremony took in the courtyard of Les InvalidesCredit:<br \/>\nChesnot\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Far-Right leader Marine Le Pen accused the government of exploiting the grief over Beltrame to &quot;escape from its own incompetence and cowardice&quot; in failing to tackle Islamic extremism.<\/p>\n<p>Click Here: <a href='https:\/\/www.miugolf.com\/Putters' title='Putters'>Putters<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Prime Minister Edouard Philippe hit back at the criticism on Tuesday, telling parliament:\u00a0&quot;Those who say ignorantly that this attack could have been avoided, those who promise people zero risk &#8211; I say to them, these people bear a heavy responsibility in speaking so casually.&quot;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Emmanuel Macron led a national ceremony on Wednesday\u00a0morning paying tribute to a heroic policeman who died after swapping with a female hostage during a jihadist attack. Lieutenant-Colonel Arnaud Beltrame, 44, was was killed along with three others in the shooting spree last Friday in the southwestern towns of Carcassonne and nearby Trebes. \u201cHis greatness&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}