General Jean-Louis Georgelin, former chief of staff of the armies and responsible for the restoration site of Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral, died at the age of 74 on Friday evening during a hike in the Pyrenees, said on Saturday the parquet floor of Foix to AFP.
“The PGHM (high mountain gendarmerie platoon) intervened on the slopes of Mont-Valier (…) and discovered the body of a man who was formally identified as General Georgelin”, indicated a representative of the prosecution, specifying that the accidental track was privileged.
The PGHM was alerted by the guardian of the Estagnous refuge (2,246 m above sea level), below Mont-Valier, who informed him that a hiker had not returned, said the prosecution, adding that the general was hiking alone, according to the first elements of the investigation.
Alerted around 8:00 p.m., the platoon flew to the scene by helicopter from the air section of the Pamiers gendarmerie and found the general dead, according to the gendarmerie.
The investigation is entrusted to the Foix research brigade with the findings made by the PGHM, according to the same source.
Five-star general, Jean-Louis Georgelin, born August 30, 1948 in Aspet, Haute-Garonne, former student of Saint-Cyr and chief of staff of Jacques Chirac in 2002, had been promoted to army general in 2003.
Chief of Staff of the French Armed Forces (Cema) from 2006 to 2010, he supervised operations in Côte d’Ivoire, Afghanistan, the Balkans and Lebanon.
President Emmanuel Macron had chosen him in 2020 to orchestrate the reconstruction of Notre-Dame Cathedral, to move forward with determination on this extremely complex project.
08/19/2023 11:29:14 – Toulouse (AFP) – © 2023 AFP