Modern European Martyrs

[Teutone]

A Thread to honor modern European martyrs and remember them.

[Teutone]

Arnaud Beltrame (44)

Story:

"Mr Beltrame, who had served in Iraq in 2005, was one of the first to arrive at the scene of the siege on Friday.

He offered to trade places – unarmed – with a hostage the attacker was still holding. He then entered the store with his mobile phone, which he managed to surreptitiously leave on a table with the line open so colleagues could hear what was happening.

When shots were heard, elite police stormed the building and killed the suspect."

[Teutone]

Yevgeny Rodionov (19)

Story

"On his 19th birthday, Rodionov was beheaded on the outskirts of the Chechen village Bamut. According to his killers, who later extorted money from his mother in exchange for knowledge of the location of his corpse, they beheaded him after he refused to renounce his Christian faith or remove the silver cross he wore around his neck. Ruslan Khaikhoroev later admitted the murder. In the presence of foreign representatives of OSCE he confessed: "Your [Yevgeny's mother] son had a choice to stay alive. He could have converted to Islam, but he did not agree to take the cross off. He tried to escape".

[Teutone]

Daniel H. (35)

Story:

"He and 2 of his friends defended a woman that was about to be raped by several refugees, he successfully stopped the rape but was stabbed to death by the refugees, his 2 friends were heavily wounded"

[Teutone]

Jacques Hamel (85)

Story:

"Hamel died when his throat was slit by two Muslim men, Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean, who both pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. The attack occurred while Hamel was saying Mass in his parish in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray on 26 July 2016. During the attack, Hamel said "Satan, go!" when confronted by his killers."

[Teutone]

Theo van Gogh (47)

Story:

"Working from a script written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, van Gogh created the 10-minute short film Submission. The movie deals with violence against women in some Islamic societies; it tells the stories, using visual shock tactics, of four abused Muslim women. The title, Submission, is a translation of the word "Islam" into English. In the film, women's naked bodies, with texts from the Qur'an written on them in henna, in an allusion to traditional wedding rituals in some cultures, are veiled with semi-transparent shrouds as the women kneel in prayer, telling their stories as if they are speaking to Allah.

Van Gogh was shot and stabbed by Mohammed Bouyeri while cycling to work on 2 November 2004 at about 9 o'clock in the morning. Mohammed Bouyeri also injured some bystanders and left on the scene a note containing death threats to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who went into hiding"

[Teutone]

Jean-Baptiste Salvaing (42) - Jessica Schneider (36)

"On the evening of 13 June 2016, in Magnanville, France, Jean-Baptiste Salvaing, a 42-year-old police commanding officer at the Mureaux police station, was coming home after work to his house in allée des Perdrix. Around 8:00 p.m., a 25-year-old man, Larossi Abballa, parked his car 20 m away from the victim's house and hid behind the front gate of the house.

The police officer entered his property at around 8:30 p.m. and Abballa immediately attacked him, stabbing him twice, while shouting "Allahu akbar." The victim managed to flee into the street, where he met a neighbour and asked him to call emergency services and get to cover.[citation needed] Abballa finally caught up with the police officer, stabbing him again several times before barricading himself in the house of his victim. Inside the house, he murdered the victim's partner, Jessica Schneider, a 36-year-old administration worker at the Mantes-la-Jolie police station, by slitting her throat. The couple's three-year-old child remained unharmed."

[Dandelion]

Pim Fortuyn



On 6 May 2002, at age 54, Fortuyn was assassinated by gunshot in Hilversum, North Holland, by Volkert van der Graaf. The attack took place in a parking lot outside a radio studio where Fortuyn had just given an interview. This was nine days before the general election, for which he was running. The attacker was pursued by Hans Smolders, Fortuyn's driver, and was arrested by the police shortly afterward, still in possession of a handgun.[19] Months later, Van der Graaf confessed in court to the first notable political assassination in the Netherlands since 1672 (excluding World War II),[20] and on 15 April 2003, he was convicted of assassinating Fortuyn and sentenced to 18 years in prison.[21] He was released on parole in May 2014 after serving two thirds of his sentence, the standard procedure under the Dutch penal system.[22]

The assassination shocked many residents of the Netherlands and highlighted the cultural clashes within the country. Various conspiracy theories arose after Pim Fortuyn's murder and deeply affected Dutch politics and society.[23] Politicians from all parties suspended campaigning. After consultation with LPF, the government decided not to postpone the elections. As Dutch law did not permit modifying the ballots, Fortuyn became a posthumous candidate. The LPF made an unprecedented debut in the House of Representatives by winning 26 seats (17% of the 150 seats in the house). The LPF joined a cabinet with the Christian Democratic Appeal and the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, but conflicts in the rudderless LPF quickly collapsed the cabinet, forcing new elections. By the following year, the party had lost support, winning only eight seats in the 2003 elections. It won no seats in the 2006 elections, by which time the Party for Freedom, led by Geert Wilders, had emerged as a successor.

During the last months of his life, Fortuyn had become closer to the Catholic Church. To the surprise of many commentators and Dutch TV hosts, Fortuyn insisted on Fr. Louis Berger, a parish priest from The Hague, accompanying him in some of his last TV appearances. According to the New York Times, Berger had become his "friend and confessor" during the last weeks of his life.[24]

Fortuyn was initially buried in Driehuis in the Netherlands. He was re-interred on 20 July 2002, at San Giorgio della Richinvelda, in the province of Pordenone in Italy, where he had owned a house.

[Teutone]

Soraya Belkacemi (53) Lucile Garcia (45) Cyril Vangriecken (22)

Story:

At about 10:30, outside the Aux Augustins café in Liege's city centre, the attacker shouted "Allahu Akbar", according to Federal Magistrate Wenke Rogen and according to a video reported by La Repubblica. He was armed with a knife that he used to stab two female officers, Lucile Garcia and Soraya Belkacemi, from behind as they were checking parking meters. He took one of the officers' handguns (he was later pictured with two handguns) and fatally shot the officers. A 22-year-old male, Cyril Vangriecken, was also killed in an attempted car-jacking before the perpetrator went into the Athénée de Waha high school and tried to take a female cleaner hostage who was left unharmed after she told the attacker that she was a Muslim who observed Ramadan, and persuaded him to not harm the pupils. All the students had been evacuated to the nearby Botanical Garden.

[Bobby Martnen]

True heroes.