Victims of last year's terror attacks in January have been awarded the Légion d'honneur, France's highest honour, together with five people who played a pivotal role during the three day siege, reports RFI.
Meanwhile, four men who helped thwart a terrorist attack on a French train back in August have also been honoured for their heroism.
It's France's highest decoration and the most famous in the world. The Légion d’Honneur this year took on a rather political message, in esteeming brave men and women who either lost their lives to terrorism or tried to fight against it.
Out of the 600 recipients, twenty at least were involved in last year's fatal attacks in January and in a Thalys train attack later in August.
That's just under 5%, a small sum, but the impact is big. With these awards, the government is trying to illustrate that in the face of terrorism good will always win out.
The Légion d'Honneur recognizes the most deserving members of society, and they include fifteen of the seventeen victims of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.
Among them are four cartoonists from the satirical newspaper: Charb, Cabu, Honoré and Tignous, together with columnist Elsa Cayat and corrector Mustapha Ourrad; all of them were killed on January 7 when Islamist gunmen stormed their offices.
But cartoonist Georges Wolinski, and columnist Bernard Maris -who were also killed- were not knighted, because they're already knights.