On 23 May 1996, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) claimed it had murdered seven monks two days earlier.
Members of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in Algeria brutally murder seven French Trappist monks after negotiations with the French government regarding the imprisonment of GIA sympathizers break down.
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A week later, seven heads were found on a road near Medea. The monks’ bodies have never been located.
Investigations into the death of French monks in Algeria in 1996 reveal that they were likely killed a month before the official announcement of their deaths and were beheaded after their death, Radio France reported today.
In the spring of 1996, during the Algerian Civil War, seven French Trappist monks refused to leave their monastery in Tibhirine, in the Algerian Atlas Mountains.
Christian de Chergé, Luc Dochier, Paul Favre Miville, Michel Fleury, Christophe Lebreton, Bruno Lemarchand and Celestin Ringeard remained despite the growing insecurity prevailing in the region of Medea, a hundred kilometres south of Algiers.