"There you are, Mr. Poutine, the beautiful person you killed," said Friday the mother of journalist Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, fatally hit by shrapnel at the end of May in Ukraine, during a rally in Paris for him. pay homage.

• Read also: A French journalist killed in Ukraine

His family, his colleagues from the BFMTV channel were notably present, alongside Marc-Olivier Fogiel, the general manager of BFMTV, and Christophe Deloire, the secretary general of the Paris-based organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF), noted an AFP journalist on the spot.

Frédéric was a "sweet and joyful person, so don't be sad", declared Sylviane Imhoff, in front of several hundred people participating in this rally at the call of RSF.

“Giving the floor to the most humble, to the invisible” was part of “the values ​​from which he was steeped”, she underlined, moved, referring to previous reports with chambermaids in large hotels in particular.

“The editorial staff is in mourning. We mourn a committed journalist,” said Marc-Olivier Fogiel, describing a professional who was anything but “hotheaded”. “He wanted to tell the world, we will continue to cover this conflict”.

The rally was to end with a minute of applause.

The body of Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, killed on May 30 by shrapnel during a bombardment, was repatriated to France overnight from Wednesday to Thursday, in the presence of the Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak.

Aged 32, he had worked for BFMTV for six years and was on his second assignment in Ukraine as an image reporter (JRI).

After the announcement of his death, the French National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor's Office (Pnat) announced the opening of a war crimes investigation.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna tweeted that the journalist had been "killed by a Russian bombardment".