Release of classified info could shed light on Tibérhirine killings
The lawyer connected to the case of seven French monks murdered at the Tibérhirine monastary in Algeria in 1996 has asked President Nicolas Sarkozy to release secret documents which could shed more light on the investigation.
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In a letter published on Monday on the website Mediapart, Patrick Baudouin urged the president not to allow the truth to be hidden behind the abusive idea of classified information.
On 4 April Marc Trévidic, the judge in charge of the investigation, submitted a new demand to the head of the external intelligence agency, DGSE, for the release of classified documents.
The seven monks were kidnapped in March 1996 during the Algerian civil war. The heads of the monks were found at the end of May on a mountain road, but the bodies were never recovered.
The Armed Islamic Group, GIA, said they carried out the killings, but the recent testimony by a former defense attaché, General Francois Buchwalter, has raised the possibility it was a mistake carried out by the Algerian army during a rescue attempt.
Public interest in the incident has recently been renewed after the critically-acclaimed film by Xavier Beauvois, ‘Des hommes et des dieux’.
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