Video: Paris shootings: tributes to Ahmed Merabet, the smiling Muslim policeman who was gunned down in cold blood  - TelegraphVideo: Paris shootings: tributes to Ahmed Merabet, the smiling Muslim policeman who was gunned down in cold blood  - Telegraph





























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Paris shootings: tributes to Ahmed Merabet, the smiling Muslim policeman who was gunned down in cold blood 

Ahmed Merabet, the policeman killed in Charlie Hebdo attack, described by 
  friends as 'straightforward, modest, super kind and adorable' 











 



							By 
											Holly Watt, and Bill Gardner in Paris, video by Alice Wagstaffe

1:23PM GMT 09 Jan 2015
 



To the traders of the Rue de Lappe, Ahmed Merabet was the smiling policeman 
  who popped in for a drink and a chat after hours every weekend. 


But on Wednesday, they saw their friend sprawled in the street, begging for 
  mercy moments before he was shot in the head at point blank range. 


Mr Merabet, a Muslim, was killed outside the Charlie Hebdo office during 
  Wednesday's massacre. Footage from the attack showed the officer lying 
  wounded on the pavement. As the gunmen moved closer, they asked the 
  42-year-old: "Do you want to kill us?"


"No, no chief," said Mr Merabet before they shot him in the head at 
  point blank range and escaped. 


Mr Merabet was thought to be getting married this summer and had recently been 
  promoted. On Thursday, friends said he had been looking forward to starting 
  a family.



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Aziz Mezine, who works at the Bazar Egyptien where Mr Merabet visited most 
  weekends, said he had recognised his friend from his final gesture in the 
  moments before his death. 


"I didn't want to see the video, but then I watched it. It is even worse. 
  It is a barbaric act, killing someone like that. They didn't think of him as 
  a person," he said. 


"He was straightforward, modest, super kind," he said. "He was 
  adorable ... Everyone liked him. 


"I didn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. I didn't want to believe it."


Mr Merabet, originally from Livry-Gargan, had been a fully-trained police 
  officer for eight years. His family have said they wish to bury him at a 
  large Muslim cemetery north-east of Paris. 


"No one condones acts like this," his friend Mr Mezine said. 


"He was such a smiling boy. He said he wanted to start a family. And he 
  was going to get married in the spring. It's terrible.


"Two years ago, my 16-year-old nephew came from Bordeaux for the 
  holidays. He was here in the restaurant all by himself. I asked Ahmed if he 
  would chat to him for a bit and they stayed talking for two hours. 


"Despite the age gap – the policeman and the boy from the banlieues (the 
  suburbs)."


Mr Mezine added that the attackers had not cared that the policeman was a 
  fellow Muslim. 


"Muslim or not Muslim, they just saw the uniform and killed him," he 
  said. "He was wearing a uniform and representing France, so they don't 
  look at religion."






Mehenni Mezine, another trader on the Rue de Lappe, said Mr Merabet had given 
  his life to save others. 


"These men who hide behind masks are not men," he said. "To do 
  this to a human being without defence, to say 'it's good, chief' ... These 
  are savages, they are barbarians ... It is an abomination."


"They are not men. The man who is dead, that was a man."


Mr Merabet worked a local beat and was popular among bar staff and shopkeepers 
  in the area. 


The group plan to make signs, "Je Suis Ahmed" to place alongside the "Je 
  Suis Charlie" signs that have become the symbol of the tragedy. 


"We are all Charlie, whether we are Muslim or not," he said. "We 
  are not scared of barbarians like that. We have the right to express 
  ourselves. We are all Charlie and we are all Ahmed."


Flowers, candles and pens were placed yesterday at the spot where Mr Merabet 
  died, as well outside the Charlie Hebdo headquarters where hundreds of 
  mourners held a minute's silence at midday. 


Tributes were also paid to protection officer Franck Brinsolaro, a married 
  father of two tasked to guard the magazine's director Stephane Charbonnier, 
  who had been subjected to repeated death threats. 


Police sources said on Thursday that the bodyguard had been shot dead before 
  he had a chance to respond. 


At a ceremony in Marseille, his brother Phillipe tearfully pleaded with French 
  citizens to rally against those responsible for the killings. 


"Sometimes one has the feeling that the police are poorly understood by 
  citizens, but we must not forget that the gesture yesterday shows that, in 
  any case, a police officer on every occasion will intervene when he needs to 
  protect the nation," he said. 





Watch: How Charlie Hebdo's editor stood up to terror 


The daughter of 80-year-old George Wolinski, one of the cartoonists murdered 
  in the attack, shared a poignant photograph of his empty desk. 


Elsa Wolinski's tribute to her Tunisian-born father showed a pen on a blank 
  sheaf of paper beside a notebook, with the caption: "Dad is gone, not 
  Wolinski."


"I never thought you could kill artists," she told a French radio 
  station. "I don't think you can kill ideas."


She added: "He was a man who was afraid. He was scared of what would 
  happen to society, and of the world he was leaving to his grandchildren." 




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