PARIS (CNS) French President Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to uncover the truth about the 1996 deaths of a group of French Catholic monks in Algeria following claims that they were beheaded by the Algerian army, rather than their Islamic kidnappers. "Relations between great countries are founded on truth, not on falsehood," Sarkozy told journalists July 7.
A French diplomat testified that the seven Trappists were killed during an air attack by the Algerian military, which later rigged the evidence to incriminate the North African country’s Armed Islamic Group.
Meanwhile, French Justice Minister Michele Alliot-Marie told the National Assembly that the claims had "introduced a new element," adding that investigators would be given "all means to complete their inquiries, including material on international cooperation."
The Trappists, headed by their prior, Father Christian-Marie de Cherge, were abducted the night of March 26-27, 1996, from their hilltop Monastery of Notre Dame d’Atlas in Tibehirine, 45 miles south of Algiers.
The heads of the monks were found the following May at Medea, and their deaths were blamed on Armed Islamic Group members, who had previously threatened to kill foreigners.
However, in 2004, the Paris prosecutor’s office opened an inquiry after a civil suit questioning the official French and Algerian version of events was filed by one of the victim’s families and a member of the Trappist order, also known as the Cistercians of the Strict Observance.
In a July 6 report, France’s Le Figaro daily said it had seen an affidavit filed with investigators by retired Gen. Francois Buchwalter, former military attache at the French Embassy in Algiers, stating that the monks were killed when Algerian army helicopters attacked an alleged Armed Islamic Group hideout near the village of Blida.
In the document, Buchwalter said the bullet-riddled bodies were dismembered to prevent their wounds being traced to army weaponry. He added that he had informed France’s chief of staff and ambassador to Algeria after receiving details of the incident from an Algerian officer, but had been told to remain silent to avoid damaging French-Algerian relations.
The 65-year-old general, who served in Algeria in 1995-98, told the inquiry he suspected Algerian authorities were also behind the bomb explosion that killed Bishop Pierre Claverie of Oran Aug. 1, 1996, Le Figaro reported.
A lawyer for the Trappists’ families, Patrick Baudouin, told Le Figaro, "We will ask France to lift the secrecy order on its military attache’s reports and ask Algeria for (the return of) the monks’ bodies."
