The Algeria Government postponed a visit by a French magistrate investigating the 1996 massacre of seven Cistercian monks, four days before he was due to arrive on 2 March, saying it was not ready to receive him and a dozen experts. The team was hoping to investigate claims that the killing was the work of the Algerian military rather than the Islamists whom Algiers has long blamed.
The visit was put off until June, after Algeria’s presidential election in April. The decision by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 77, to seek a fourth term despite having suffered a stroke has caused tension in some political and military circles.
Magistrate Marc Trévidic and the experts want to examine the skulls of the murdered monks, who were kidnapped from their monastery in the northern town of Tibhirine, to see if they can find evidence for a former French defence attaché’s claim that Algerian troops accidentally killed them by firing on an Islamist camp from a helicopter.
When they landed and found the monks among the dead, the soldiers beheaded them to make the killing look like the work of Islamists, the attaché claimed.
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