Overview
- Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez announced Lambert’s death and paid tribute to him as “a great cop, a great prefect and a friend.”
- Lambert helped found RAID in 1985 and served as the unit’s director from 2002 to 2004.
- He led the RAID operations that produced the 2003 arrest of Yvan Colonna, the suspect later convicted for the murder of Prefect Claude Erignac.
- After leaving RAID he served as prefect of Seine‑Saint‑Denis, acted as the government’s lead on priority security zones known as ZSP, and later became director of security at SNCF.
- RAID’s official homage described him as a hands‑on field officer, coverage noted his reported closeness to Nicolas Sarkozy (nicknamed “Panda”), and no cause of death has been reported in the current coverage.