After official homage in city centre, coffin of officer killed last week is returned to family for funeral in north-eastern suburb

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Ahmed Merabet would have celebrated his 41st birthday on Thursday last week, one day after the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo. On Tuesday, the family of the police officer, murdered in cold blood by terrorists, buried him.

His Tricolor-draped coffin arrived to a crowd of silent mourners. On the flag were his képi and the Légion d’Honneur placed there earlier by the French president, François Hollande, who described Merabet as a symbol of the “diversity of France’s forces of law and order”.

“He was very proud to represent the French republic,” Hollande said after posthumously awarding the three officers killed in last week’s attacks in Paris the highest honour in France.

“Ahmed Merabet knew better than anyone that radical Islam has nothing to do with Islam and that fanaticism kills Muslims,” the president said.

After the official homage in central Paris, Merabet’s coffin was returned to his family, and met in Bobigny in the north-east of the city by a crowd of hundreds.

“I have lost a friend, a kind, respectful, helpful friend,” Yamina Zanasni, who has known Merabet for 15 years told journalists. “He is a hero.”

Friends, relatives and locals, some of them carrying #JesuisAhmed placards, gathered under a white tent where prayer mats had been laid beside the mosque next to the cemetery.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The funeral of Ahmed Merabet at a Muslim cemetery in Bobigny. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

The officer was one of two police patrolling the street near the magazine offices on his bicycle on Wednesday morning. It was his patch, and he had patrolled it for eight years, but had recently passed his promotion exams after months of intense study.

Wednesday was to have been his last day on bicycle duty, but as he and his colleague rode along Boulevard Richard-Lenoir in the 11th arrondissement they were confronted by brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi fleeing the scene where they had already killed 11 people.

Merabet drew his weapon and fired at the gunmen’s car, but his police-issue pistol was no match for their Kalashnikovs, and he was shot and injured.

What followed next demonstrated the chilling determination of the attackers. Heading for their black Citröen C3 getaway car, the Kouachi brothers halted before calmly running back to where Merabet lay injured.

“You want to kill us?” one of the hooded gunmen asked the injured officer “No, it’s fine, boss,” Merabet replied raising his arm over his head. The jihadi gunman slowed down for a fraction of a second then shot the officer in the head at point blank range before returning to the car.

On the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, passersby have laid dozens of bouquets of flowers and messages near a smiling portrait of the officer.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A tribute to Merabet. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Merabet, whose parents came from Algeria, lived in Livry-Gargan, in the gritty northern Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis. He was the fourth of their six children born in France. The four sisters and two brothers lived in the same street, Ahmed with his partner Morgane.

The troubled and often denigrated banlieue of Seine-Saint-Denis – known as “le 93” because of its postcode – is short of heroes. Ahmed Merabet is now one.

“He represented the good side of the 93,” said Yassine, a pupil at the local secondary school. “Because we’re always seen as bad.”

During the emotional and patriotic ceremony earlier in the day at the Prefecture de Police in central Paris, Hollande and the prime minister, Manuel Valls, both looked close to tears as tribute was paid to Merabet and the two other murdered officers.

Lt Franck Brinsolaro, a protection officer assigned to the Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier, known as Charb, was gunned down when the Kouachi brothers stormed into the magazine’s morning editorial conference.

Clarissa Jean-Philippe, 26, was shot by their accomplice Amedy Coulibaly after the trainee officer was called to a car accident in the Montrouge area of Paris with two other colleagues. Detectives are investigating whether a nearby Jewish school was Coulibaly’s intended target.

Members of the French government, political leaders and 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.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The French president, François Hollande, stands in front of the coffin of police officer Ahmed Merabet during a national tribute for all the police officers killed last week. Photograph: Pool/Reuters

“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’s 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. “They represented the diversity of origins … of the forces of order in our country.”

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

At the same time as the Paris ceremony, the funeral of four Jewish men, killed by Coulibaly at a Kosher supermarket on Friday, took place in Jerusalem.

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

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

On Tuesday, Valls addressed the Assemblée Nationale where MPs sang La Marseillaise together for the first time since 11 November 1918, Armistice Day. “La Marseillaise is a magnificent message,” Valls said.

He added: “Yes, France is at war against terrorism, against jihadists, against radicalism. But France is not at war against a religion. France is not at war against Muslims, against Islam.

“In three days, 17 lives have been taken away by barbarity. The terrorists have assassinated journalists, French Jews, workers, well known and anonymous people, in their diversity of origin and option.

“It has touched the heart of the whole of France …but France has risen up.”