France honors police couple killed by radical in their home

They have been allowed to do so on a temporary basis, since the Paris attacks in November, in which 130 people were killed.

Hollande posthumously made the two victims, police officer Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and police administrator Jessica Schneider, knights of the Legion of Honor, France’s highest honor.

(AP Photo/Kamil Zihnioglu). A French police officer holds a rose and an candle to pay homage to the two slain colleagues during a white march in Mantes-la-Jolie, west of Paris, Thursday, June 16, 2016.

Paris: Two men linked to a jihadist who killed a French police officer and his partner were charged and detained by an anti-terror court.

Their three-year-old son Mathieu, who witnessed the bloodshed, was taken hostage by Abballa. He was appointed No.2 in 2014 at the police station in Mureaux.

Police raided the house and eventually killed Abballa.

Abballa, a convicted radical who had been under surveillance, murdered the police officer and his partner outside their home and then was killed himself in a police raid.

A French prosecutor asked that two suspects with links to the killer of two French police officials earlier this week be handed preliminary terrorism charges Saturday connected to the murders.

Investigators have yet to decipher the scenario of the killings, and are studying the possibility that the police officer’s wife was killed first, contradicting initial reports, judicial and police officials said.

At the time, Abballa was sentenced to three years in prison.

The French attack came a day after another lone wolf pledging support to IS gunned down 49 people in Orlando, Florida, highlighting the difficulty in tracking those inspired by the jihadists from afar.

At the ceremony, the president and prime minister moved along the front row, shaking hands with officers but one policeman kept his hand down.

Hollande said during the ceremony that security officials had stymied more than 15 attack attempts in the past few months.

He noted that a lone wolf attack was hard to prevent and repeated a warning that terrorism was an inevitable threat. “It’s very hard to say this… but unfortunately it is the truth”, he said.