Macron to lead tribute to slain hero officer

President Emmanuel Macron is to lead a state tribute to slain gendarme Arnaud Beltrame, who was killed after exchanging himself for a hostage held by a terrorist last week.The ceremony will take place tomorrow morning in the old Invalides military hospital in Paris, where Napoleon is buried, the Elysee Palace said yesterday.Macron, accompanied by his wife Brigitte, will make a funeral speech.Beltrame’s family and those of the other three victims of Friday’s attacks will also be present, and the ceremony will be open to the public.Yesterday Pope Francis added his voice to those paying tribute to 44-year-old Beltrame.“I salute in particular the generous and heroic act of Lieutenant Colonel Arnaud Beltrame, who gave his life to protect others,” the pontiff said, offering his prayers for all the victims.Beltrame gave himself up to 25-year-old Radouane Lakdim in exchange for a civilian hostage that the gunman – who declared himself a “soldier” of the Islamic State (IS) extremist group – was holding in a supermarket in the southern town of Trebes.The former petty criminal had already killed three other people – two when he opened fire on entering in the supermarket, and one earlier during a carjacking.Special forces who had surrounded the supermarket subsequently launched an assault after hearing gunshots, and killed Lakdim.They found Beltrame seriously injured.He died of his wounds in the early hours of Saturday.Meanwhile, a judicial source confirmed that Lakdim’s partner was, like him, on a state security watchlist.She was arrested on Friday night hours after Lakdim was killed.A legal source had told AFP on Sunday that the 18-year-old was answering questions during her detention, and had “shown signs of radicalisation”.A friend of the attacker, a minor born in 2000, was also arrested on Saturday.Lakdim had been on a watchlist since 2014 but surveillance in 2016 and 2017 had shown no indications that he might carry out any attack, according to anti-terrorism prosecutor Francois Molins.The right-wing opposition criticised President Emmanuel Macron’s government and called for harsher measures against suspected extremists.Laurent Wauquiez, leader of the main Les Republicains opposition party, called for a state of emergency, lifted in November two years after deadly attacks in Paris killed 130 people, to be reimposed.“I demand that we no longer content ourselves with tracking Islamists and waiting for them to carry out attacks,” Wauquiez said.The most dangerous should be “interned” and those without French nationality expelled, he argued.Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally, formerly National Front, meanwhile called for the resignation of Interior Minister Gerard Collomb and the expulsion of all foreigners and dual nationals on the security watchlist.But Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said there was “no naivety” on the government’s part.Authorities were fighting, not just against terrorism, but against “political Islam” which was “eating away at our society”, he said.“The struggle against political Islam is the struggle of a generation,” he told public broadcaster FranceInfo.Meanwhile, Beltrame’s mother has called for tolerance as the country prepared a national tribute for the officer.Nicolle Beltrame said she was not surprised by her 44-year-old son Arnaud’s selfless act on Friday, adding that he was a fierce patriot and proud serviceman.“Arnaud would not have wanted us to give up,” she told RTL radio. “I’m here to honour him and I’m speaking to honour him, so that his act has some purpose, that we’re a bit more human, a bit more tolerant.”She said that when she heard that a police officer had been killed in the Friday attack, she knew it was her son.“I know Arnaud: loyal, altruistic, and since he was small, working for other people, committed to the country,” she said.“He couldn’t have done anything else, he wasn’t someone who could shirk something,” Beltrame said of her son. “I’m not surprised, even if it’s very painful and it will be very hard to live without him.”Asked if she felt hatred towards Lakdim, she replied: “Not at all. I feel indifference and the greatest sense of contempt. I think that someone must not be right in the head to do something like this.”She also suggested not even talking about him, “not showing his photo. We should show the photos of heroes, not killers and monsters”.Richard Lizurey, the head of France’s gendarmes police service, said that Arnaud Beltrame took the initiative to swap places with a woman being used by Lakdim as a human shield.Calling his sacrifice a first for the gendarmerie, Lizurey told France Inter radio: “The decision made by Arnaud Beltrame was his own decision, which he determined he had to do because he wanted to save a hostage’s life, which is what he did.”