Col Beltrame was a highly-regarded member of the Gendarmerie Nationale and was described by France's president on Saturday as someone who "fought until the end and never gave up".
He graduated in 1999 from France's leading military academy in Saint Cyr and in 2003 became one of just a handful of candidates chosen to join the gendarmerie's elite security response group GSIGN.
He was deployed to Iraq in 2005 and was later awarded the Cross for Military Valour for his peacekeeping work. On his return to France, Col Beltrame joined the country's Republican Guard and was tasked with protecting the presidential palace.
In 2017, he was named deputy chief of the Gendarmerie Nationale in the French region of Aude, home to the medieval town of Carcassonne, where Lakdim began his deadly shooting spree on Friday.
As recently as December, Col Beltrame took part in a simulated terror attack on a local supermarket in the region.
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