Shock cover-up charges about slain French monks in Algeria
6th July 2009
The 1996 murder of seven French Catholic monks in Algeria, called the Martyrs of Atlas because of the Atlas mountains where their monastery was located, was not the work of Islamist militants as officially stated at the time, according to testimony by a retired French general to an inquiry into the killings.
In fact, he told a closed-door inquiry in Paris, Algerian troops in a helicopter inadvertently gunned down the Trappists when they strafed an isolated camp they believed belonged to the radical Armed Islamic Group (GIA) that was battling the Algerian state at the time. When they landed to inspect the scene, the troops found the bullet-ridden bodies of the monks who had been kidnapped two months beforehand. Algeria then concocted the story that the Islamists had slit the monks’ throats to hide their fatal blunder.
The GIA has a sordid part in this story, as they apparently abducted the monks after the Trappists had been kidnapped by Algerian agents in a complicated plot. But if these testimonies are correct, the monks did not die at the hands of Islamists who slit their throats, as the official Algerian explanation has it.
Truth will out.