Colonel Beltrame’s superior looks back on his “undeniably heroic” gesture

The trial for the Trèbes and Carcassonne attacks opens Monday in Paris. Colonel Sébastien Gay, former boss of the Aude gendarmes, was in Trèbes when Arnaud Beltrame was assassinated. The two men had known each other for 30 years. Now stationed at the central management of the gendarmerie, Colonel Gay spoke to franceinfo.

Colonel Gay is not ready to forget this March 23, 2018: he is in a meeting when he learns of the hostage-taking inside the Super U in Trèbes, to cries of “Allah Akbar”. An employee and a customer have just been shot dead. Just before, the terrorist killed a man in a Carcassonne parking lot. Armed with a knife, a pistol, a grenade and explosives, he holds a cashier hostage. Colonel Sébastien Gay immediately went to the scene.

franceinfo: What is the situation when you arrive there?

Colonel Sébastien Gay: When I arrive at the scene, there are already people inside: units of the Aude gendarmerie group with Colonel Beltrame. The first arrivals, whatever their unit, seek to put an end to the terrorist attack. And in fact quite quickly, by unrolling a diagram without me needing to give an order, we arrive at a stabilized situation where we have evacuated the last customers, the last potential victims, from the supermarket. The terrorist is fixed, immobilized in one place with a hostage. So the crisis is not over, but we know that a priori we will not have any additional victims and that we can stabilize the situation while waiting for the intervention units, the GIGN in Toulouse and Paris.

And it was a few minutes after this report showing that the situation had stabilized that I learned that Colonel Beltrame had just exchanged views with the last hostage. This is quite unusual news, which I take like an uppercut to the liver. It shakes because it changes everything. And there we cling to our military training, so we reanalyze the situation: a hostage taker and a hostage. Situation unchanged compared to before, even if the nature of the hostage has changed, of course. But in fact the tactical situation has not changed. So we don’t change anything, we stay put, we talk about the assault with people who are not necessarily equipped for that, and it’s the interminable wait that will last about three hours until the outcome that we know well.

There is the assault on the GIGN in Toulouse, we hear gunshots where Arnaud Beltrame is being held. What happens next ?

What happens next is that I get reports of gunshots inside the supermarket. The general director gives the assault order, which I relay to the GIGN, which prepares and implements its assault system. And there, a few seconds, a few minutes happen, with this phenomenon of temporal expansion and contraction which means that these minutes last a few seconds and these seconds last hours… And then, I receive the report that the assault is over. I approach the supermarket.

“I take with me two gendarmes from a surveillance and intervention squad, and I enter the supermarket. And there, it’s quite a chaotic scene.”

Colonel Sébastien Gay

at franceinfo

There was a gendarme who was injured, who bled quite profusely, it can be seen. And I quickly see colleague Beltrame lying in the central cash register, with a Samu doctor who is helping him, and the terrorist. The same evening, when I visited him for the first time in the hospital, we clearly felt that this situation was critical. And the next morning, at 5:30 a.m., we received the fateful call.

And it’s difficult for a leader.

It’s difficult for a leader, it’s difficult for everyone. He was someone who immediately took up a lot of space within the group. The second person I told it to was my wife who knew him. So it’s something that comes home to us… Behind, the priority becomes telling the gendarmes of the group that they have fulfilled their mission even if one of us has fallen, it’s a fairly difficult phase in the early morning, and then, perhaps quite harshly, to keep them at work because the population of Aude is shocked, traumatized. We cannot tell the police: “go home, go and rest”. They have to be on the ground, they have to be present.

This gesture by Arnaud Beltrame, who exchanges places with that of the cashier taken hostage, will be at the heart of the trial. And this gesture did not surprise you ?

I would say that at the time, I didn’t welcome it as something entirely natural. But in relation to Arnaud’s personality, in retrospect, it’s something that didn’t surprise me: it corresponded to his level of commitment, to his way of thinking. My understanding of what he was thinking at that moment is that by removing the civilian hostage from the board and offering something instead: himself, because he couldn’t do anything propose something else, in fact it put an end to the crisis in a certain sense. We could no longer have any additional victims, it was then a problem between soldiers and terrorist.

“He is someone who had a lot of experience, who had a stint in the special forces of the gendarmerie. I think he believes he can have a positive influence on the resolution of the crisis, either by negotiating with the terrorist, or by facilitating the intervention of the GIGN.”

Colonel Sébastien Gay

at franceinfo

At the time, there was a debate within the gendarmerie about this gesture by Arnaud Beltrame. Because it is indeed a heroic gesture, but completely out of procedure, “outside the nails”. A tactical error, some will even say.

This is a gesture that does not correspond to doctrine. We are in a situation where I am in charge from the outside, I am in my place. Colonel Beltrame is in command inside, he is in his place. My duty officer is in charge at the general staff, he is in his place. We structured ourselves to manage the situation and at one point, a bit as if the ground was slipping out from under your feet, you have your contact manager who disappears from the equation. So we have to reorganize ourselves: at the same time we replace a potential civilian victim with a gendarme, so we can consider it less serious, but he is also one of us, he is a comrade. So it can undoubtedly push us to make mistakes. Mistakes that we did not make, at least not on a tactical level. We can debate the subject as much as we want, but this gesture is an individual, personal and heroic gesture, undeniably.

Arnaud Beltrame was your deputy, he was a long-time comrade of yours. What qualities did he have ?

He was a very committed person. It’s always valuable to have someone who is selflessly committed to the service of their unit, to the service of the population. He was someone who had a lot of ideas, who thought quickly, who was very imaginative, who knew how to go beyond the framework, the usual norms, to propose very original ideas while knowing how to return to the framework of employment which is the OUR. And at the same time someone very respectful of the hierarchy and the executives, of the standards that he himself applied on a daily basis in his responsibilities.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, you will testify in court. It is important for you to testify, to come and evoke the memory of Arnaud Beltrame ?

It’s important for me to experience this phase, in fact. Both to talk about my deputy as chief and also to tell the story of what the gendarmerie did that day, in a completely admirable way.