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Macron and Le Pen pay tribute to officer killed in Champs Élysées attack Macron and Le Pen pay tribute to officer killed in Champs Élysées attack
(about 4 hours later)
France’s presidential candidates have attended a ceremony in Paris to honour the police officer killed by an Islamic extremist on the Champs Élysées last week. For a brief moment on Tuesday morning, France’s battling presidential candidates suspended what is gearing up to be a bitter final campaign to honour the police officer gunned down on the Champs-Elysées in Paris last week.
The outgoing president, François Hollande, paid tribute to Xavier Jugelé, 37, in a speech at the Paris police headquarters, as the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron looked on. François Hollande, the outgoing president, led the tribute to Xavier Jugelé, 37, as the independent centrist Emmanuel Macron and the far-right leader Marine Le Pen looked on.
Jugelé was killed on 20 April when an assailant opened fire with an assault rifle on a police van parked on the most famous road in the French capital. Two other officers were wounded. The attacker was shot and killed by officers. Islamic State quickly claimed responsibility for the attack. Frenchman Karim Cheurfi, 39, killed Jugelé when he opened fire on a police van parked on the French capital’s most famous avenue with an automatic assault rifle. Two other police officers were injured in the attack for which Islamic State claimed responsibility. Cheurfi was shot dead as he tried to flee.
Hollande said the French people must support the police. “They deserve our esteem, our solidarity, our admiration,” he said. Jugelé was one of the officers who raced to the Bataclan concert hall when three armed men with suicide bombs stormed the venue and killed 90 people on 13 November 2015.
In a message to the presidential candidates, Hollande asked France’s future government to “provide the necessary budget resources to recruit the indispensable people to protect our citizens and give them means to act even more efficiently”.
Hollande recalled that the country’s police and military forces were deployed in France and abroad to fight terrorism in Iraq, Syria and in Africa’s Sahel region.
This is “a combat that will last, a combat that will be fought until the threat is definitively over. That combat will be long, demanding and difficult but, I am certain, victorious,” he said.
Jugelé was one of the officers who raced to the Bataclan concert hall when three armed men with suicide bombs stormed a show and killed 90 people on 13 November 2015.
A defender of gay rights, he was a member of Flag, a French association for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender police officers, and had joined protests against Russia’s ban on “homosexual propaganda” before the 2014 Olympics.A defender of gay rights, he was a member of Flag, a French association for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender police officers, and had joined protests against Russia’s ban on “homosexual propaganda” before the 2014 Olympics.
In a speech during the ceremony, his partner, Etienne Cardiles, said: “Let’s stay dignified, let’s preserve peace.” In a moving tribute, away from the ranks of politicians and digitaries, Jugelé’s partner Etienne Cardiles said: “I suffer without shame, you will not have my hatred”.
Jugelé has been posthumously promoted to police captain and awarded Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He told how he and Jugelé had exchanged text messages on Thursday about a holiday they were planning. He said the police officer was happy to be stationed on the Champs-Elysée because it was, for him, “the image of France”.
Macron and Le Pen will compete in a presidential runoff on 7 May after progressing from Sunday’s first round. On Monday Le Pen went on the offensive against her opponent, describing Macron as a “hysterical, radical Europeanist” who is weak on jihadi terror. “At that moment in that place, the worst happened,” Cardiles said. “It was one of those events that everyone dreads while hoping it will never happen. You will stay in my heart forever. Let’s remain dignified… let’s live in peace.”
Announcing she was stepping aside temporarily from the presidency of the Front National to be “above partisan considerations” and devote herself to the race for the Elysée, Le Pen said of Macron: “He is for total open borders. He says there is no such thing as French culture. There is not one area where he shows one ounce of patriotism.” Hollande awarded Jugelé the Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur, one of France’s highest honours, and promoted him to the rank of captain, at the ceremony at Paris’s police headquarters.
Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the Front National founder, told French radio on Tuesday he believed her campaign had been “too laid-back” and he would have preferred an aggressive “Trump-style” campaign “against those who are responsible for the country’s decadency.” He has been repeatedly convicted of crimes based on anti-Semitism and racism and was in 2015 pushed out of the party. The president described the fallen officer as “an everyday hero”, adding: “France has lost one of its bravest sons”.
His daughter’s aim in temporarily stepping aside from her party’s presidency is to appeal to the supporters of losing first-round candidates, particularly some of those who backed the conservative François Fillon, who finished third, and the minor rightwinger Nicolas Dupont-Aignan. Jugelé, he said, was “assassinated by a hateful fanatic … seeking to perpetrate a carnage” and urged the French people to support the police.
Politicians from the Socialist and Les Républicains parties – the mainstream centre-left and centre-right groups that have dominated French politics for decades, but found themselves shut out by voters – united to urge the country to back Macron and reject Le Pen’s populist, anti-EU and anti-immigration nationalism. “They deserve our esteem, our solidarity, our admiration,” said Hollande.
Hollande said he would vote for Macron, his former economy minister, because Le Pen represented “both the danger of the isolation of France and of rupture with the EU”. A far-right president would “deeply divide France”, he said. “Faced with such a risk, it is not possible to … take refuge in indifference.” Macron and Le Pen both dressed sombrely in dark blue coats to attend the memorial for the murdered police officer.
Macron, 39, who founded the En Marche! movement this time last year and has never held elected office, became the clear favourite to become France’s youngest president after winning 24.01% of the vote, ahead of Le Pen’s 21.3%. It was the shortest of lulls in the presidential race, which sees the pair compete in a runoff vote on 7 May.
Polls have consistently predicted Macron would win a head-to-head contest between the two by up to 25 points. Earlier on Tuesday, Le Pen had visited the Rungis wholesale market south of Paris, where she again attacked her rival saying he was for “total deregulation” and she stood for “market regulation”.
Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this story Francis Fauchère, president of the meat wholesalers union at Rungis, who welcomed Le Pen admitted she was like “all the other candidates who we see every five years and who promise the same things”.
On Tuesday morning Jean-Marie Le Pen told France Inter radio that his daughter’s campaign had been “too laid back” until now and said he would have preferred a “Trump-style” approach to the election that was “very aggressive against those responsible for the country’s decadence”.
Jean-Marie Le Pen was ousted as the Front National honorary president in 2015 in a clash with his daughter and younger officials after making anti-semitic remarks.
Macron was due to visit a hospital to talk about care of people with disabilities on Tuesday afternoon.
Also on Tuesday a Japanese-based cybersecurity research group called Trend Micro claimed Macron’s campaign was targeted by Russian hackers last month. It said The Pawn Storm group was linked to several phishing attempts to steal personal data from the candidate and members of his En Marche! campaign.
“There is always some technical uncertainty when it comes to attribution,” Loic Guezo, a strategist for southern Europe at Trend Micro, told AFP.
“But we have analysed the operating tactics with data compiled over two years, which allowed us to determine the source.”
After her first round election victory, Le Pen announced on Monday evening she was stepping aside from her role as president of the Front National.
She announced Jean-François Jalkh, one of the party’s vice presidents and a friend of her father, would replace her during the campaign. French papers pointed out that Jalkh was present at a celebration in 1991 to mark the 40th anniversary of the death of Philippe Pétain, the head of France’s collaborationist Vichy government.
In a 2005 interview, Jalkh told Le Temps de savoirs review that he considered it “impossible ... from a technical point of view” that Zyklon B gas was used in the Nazi death chambers.
Jean-Yves Camus, a political analyst and specialist in the FN at the Jean-Jaurès Foundation thinktank, said the decision “wasn’t going to fool anyone” inside or outside the FN.
“Everyone knows she is not leaving the shop, there is no ‘president-in-waiting’ ... she wants to appear like Emmanuel Macron, a candidate not endorsed by any party,” Camus said on Tuesday.