Star of Courage

• Awarded on: June 26, 2001
• Invested on: December 06, 2001

On October 5, 1999, Louis Gignac, a civilian police officer with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, contributed to saving the lives of seven civilian Serbs who were being attacked by an angry Albanian mob. Cst. Gignac had been assigned to escort a funeral procession involving 25 deceased Albanians and some 5,000 mourners. When they reached a main road and the convoy became trapped in a traffic jam immediately beside two ethnic Serbs' vehicles, the Albanian crowd attacked, killing two Serbs who attempted to flee. One of the first members at the scene, Cst. Gignac was protecting the remaining Serb victims when he became the target of rocks and other projectiles, including a Molotov cocktail which exploded directly behind him and set fire to his uniform. For more than one hour, he and his colleagues formed a semicircle around the two vehicles to shield the remaining Serbs from the escalating violence until the French Military Forces were able to remove them to safety.