Memorial service held for police killed in Paris attacks

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/13/memorial-service-police-killed-paris-attacks

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The three police officers killed in last week’s attacks were honoured by French president François Hollande at a sombre and emotional ceremony at the Prefecture de Police in Paris on Tuesday.

Hollande and prime minister Manuel Valls met members of the victims’ families before the ceremony in the Cour d’Honneur of the prefecture. The officers were awarded posthumous Légion d’honneur.

The ceremony came as four Jewish victims of the attack on a kosher supermarket were buried in Jerusalem.

In Paris, distraught relatives wept as three coffins, draped in tricolour flags, were carried into the courtyard to the sombre sound of a single drum and placed on three podiums.

Lt Franck Brinsolaro, 49, was a protection officer assigned to the Charlie Hebdo editor Stéphane Charbonnier, known as Charb. Ahmed Merabet, 40, was gunned down outside the magazine offices as gunmen Saïd and Chérif Kouachi made their escape on Wednesday. Clarissa Jean-Philippe, 26, was shot by the Kouachis’ accomplice Amély Coulibaly after the trainee officer was called to a car accident in the Montrouge area of Paris with two other colleagues. The Kouachis and Coulibaly were subsequently killed by police.

Detectives are investigating whether a nearby Jewish school was Coulibaly’s initial target.

Members of the French government and political leaders, as well as police force representatives, stood grim faced as the victims’ names were read with the citation that they were “dynamic, courageous, highly professional and had an exemplary record”.

Hollande then pinned a medal to a blue cushion on each coffin.

“In the name of the French Republic we make you a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur,” he said three times before bowing for several seconds before each coffin.

After a minute silence, a military band played La Marseillaise.

In a 20 minute address, Hollande said the three officers were killed by terrorists while fulfilling their “wish to protect” the citizens of France.

“The whole of France shares your sorrow and your pain. Clarissa, Franck, Ahmed, died so we can live free,” he said.

“Clarissa, Ahmed, Franck … they represented the diversity of origins … of the forces of order in our country.”

Hollande added: “Madness has no religion, it has the face of hate, a hatred for all that France represents.”

Military bands played the funeral march as the coffins were carried past saluting colleagues out of the Cour d’Honneur.

A national ceremony for all victims of the attacks will be held at Les Invalides next week.

Merabet will be buried on Tuesday at the Muslim cemetery in the Paris suburb of Bobigny.

The bodies of four Jewish victims of the Paris terrorist attack arrived in Israel for burial on Tuesday morning. Yoav Hattab, 21, Yohan Cohen, 20 Philippe Braham, 40, and Francois-Michel Saada, 64, were taken to the cemetery at Givat Shaul on the outskirts of Jerusalem where the French minister, Ségolène Royal, posthumously awarded the four men France’s highest honour – the Légion d’honneur – and said any blow against Jews was a blow against the French republic.

Eulogising the four men, the Israeli president, Reuven Rivlin, said: “Dear families – Yoav, Yohan, Philippe, Francois-Michel – this is not how we wanted to welcome you to Israel. This is not how we wanted you to arrive in the Land of Israel, this is not how we wanted to see you come home, to the State of Israel, and to Jerusalem, its capital. We wanted you alive, we wanted for you, life.”

At a special session in France’s lower house of parliament on Tuesday afternoon, Claude Bartolone, the speaker of the house, read the names of the 17 victims and told MPs: “We are at war against terrorism, against barbarism.”

After a minute’s silence, MPs sang the national anthem.

The ceremonies come before the publication of Wednesday’s edition of Charlie Hebdo, which has a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad on its front page.

Surviving staff have announced that the edition will be translated into several languages to meet global demand.

Speaking at a press conference in Paris, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Gérard Briard, announced that 3m copies would be published and that editions would be available in Arabic, English and Spanish, as well as French, for the next two weeks. Further editions in Italian and Turkish are planned, he said.

The massacre triggered a worldwide debate on free speech and brought more than 4 million people on to the streets of France in a unity march on Sunday.

An unprecedented mobilisation of French troops on its own soil is under way as 10,000 personnel stand ready to take their positions at locations deemed vulnerable.

The troops will reinforce nearly 5,000 police officers providing security at Jewish schools and cultural centres, as well as railway stations and other possible targets.

Police in France continue to search for possible accomplices of the gunmen who carried out the terrorist attacks, after video footage was released of the partner of one of the attackers arriving in Turkey with another man.

The video shows Hayat Boumeddiene, now France’s most wanted woman, passing through immigration at Istanbul airport on 2 January, six days before her partner, Amédy Coulibaly, killed a police officer in Paris. Coulibaly went on to murder four hostages at a kosher supermarket, before being killed in a shootout with police. On Monday, the French government said it was clear that he had help.

In the Istanbul footage, Boumeddiene is accompanied by Mehdi Sabri Belhouchine, a 23-year-old French national whose name had not appeared in connection with the attacks, and who was not on a terrorist watchlist. After crossing Turkey, the pair are said by Turkish authorities to have gone into part of Syria controlled by Islamic State (Isis), to which Coulibaly declared his allegiance before his death.

There are reports that the Kouachi brothers had help. Some witnesses have talked of a third person at the scene of the attack on the magazine. French police officials said on Monday that as many as six members of the terrorist cell involved in the attacks might still be at large, including a man who was seen driving a car registered to Boumeddiene.

Two French police officials said authorities were searching the Paris area for the Mini Cooper registered to Boumeddiene.