Their faces solemn and lips closed, the crowd marched Thursday from Mantes-la-Jolie, where victim Jessica Schneider worked as a police administrator, to Magnanville, where she and police commander Jean-Baptiste Salvaing were stabbed at their home Monday night.
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Hundreds of officers attended a sombre ceremony at the prefecture of Versailles, the region where the two had lived and worked.
Both men, aged 27 and 29 respectively, were convicted along with the police killer, Larossi Abballa, in September 2013 for their roles in a jihadi network on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and claimed allegiance to Islamic State group.
Abballa, a convicted radical who had been under surveillance, murdered a French police couple in an Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)-inspired stabbing, and then was killed himself in a police raid.
“One can imagine that (he) was tracking” Salvaing, said the trusted official who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly.
The boy was found unharmed but in a state of shock when officers stormed the house and killed the attacker.
Mr Hollande promised to take measures to guarantee the anonymity of officers and he said police would be allowed permanently to carry their guns when off duty.
“Police and gendarmes must be given the means to defend themselves when they are not on duty”, he said, adding: “We must also avoid police and gendarmes being identified and targeted by criminals they have jailed, or their accomplices”.
Mr Hollande moved on, but Prime Minister Manuel Valls was seen engaging the man in brief conversation after his handshake was rejected.
A Frenchman who killed a police commander and his partner this week was seen in a van with a man involved in an aborted attack on churchgoers in the Paris suburb of Villejuif, a source close to the investigation said on Friday.
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.
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The attack came as France is hosting the European football championship.
