Exclusive/ A former GIA leader reveals how the 6 Tibherine Monks were abducted and assassinated in 1996

In an exclusive interview with Echorouk newspaper, a former GIA chieftain Omar Chikhi reveals how the 6 French Cistercian Monks were kidnapped and murdered in the Tibherine area near the city of Médéa in 1996 by a GIA terrorist group.  

• Omar Chikhi indicated that the then national GIA leader Djamel Zitouni had sent at that time an emissary to the French Embassy in Algiers for negotiations on the Monks’ affair.
• He asserted that the GIA emissary had been duly received by French Embassy officials to whom he conveyed Djamel Zitouni’s demands for the release of the 6 abducted Monks but the affair later took a dramatic turn, he said.
• Echorouk: Who were those behind the abduction and the brutal death of the 6 French Monks?
• Omar Chikhi: Elements of the GIA – linked Al Khadra brigade (Katibate Al Khadra).
• Q: You were yourself a member of the GIA group’s Choura (consultative) council, what did you come to know about the abduction affair?
• R: Most of the members of the council heard about it through the media.
• As far as I am concerned, I was at that time in the capital Algiers.
• Q: The French have accused the Algerian Military of being behind the brutal death of the 6 Monks?…
• R: It’s the GIA islamist group which kidnapped and killed the French Monks and this is no secret.
• Q: How did you cope with this issue?
• R: We considered the killing of the Monks as an act of treason as we had previously given firm assurances to the Tibherine Monks that they would be safe in their monastery.
• I had a word about this heinous act with Djamel Zitouni during a brief encounter with him.
• Q: When did you meet him?
• R: About one month and a half after the assassination of the Monks.
• I couldn’t meet him before that because of the tight Army stranglehold imposed on GIA elements in the first region.
• Q: What were the arguments put forth by Djamel Zitouni?
• R: He told me that he had demanded the release of GIA chieftain Abdelhak Layada, the non – interference in Algeria’s internal affairs and a halt to France’s military supplies to the national popular Army (ANP) in exchange for the release of the 6 abducted Monks.
• But their ensuing assassination shocked us. As a lame justification for their murder, he argued that there were indulging in evangelization practices in the Médea region.
• In fact, this was not true and I told Zitouni that he should have enjoined the Monks to stop such alleged practices and quit the country without hurting them.
• Q: When you spoke to Djamel Zitouni, what did you understand from his words?
• R: I understood that he was seeking media uproar. But I told him that the assassination of the 6 Monks had tarnished further the image of the GIA terror group.
• Q: What did he tell you about that?
• R: He sought to justify this murder saying that he had wanted to negotiate by sending a 19 year- old emissary to the French Embassy premises in Algiers.
• Q: Did the French Embassy officials receive this emissary?
• R: Zitouni affirmed that this GIA emissary was received inside the Embassy by the French to whom he conveyed the conditions set by the GIA leadership for the release of the Monks.
• Q: What was the reaction of the French Embassy officials?
• R: They told Zitouni’s emissary that they couldn’t interfere in Algeria’s domestic affairs. For his part he told them that the Layada case was a strictly Algerian case. The demands were thus unacceptable.
• Q: How was Zitouni’s relationship with the French?
• R: From the onset, Djamel Zitouni was involved in the assassination of several French nationals in the capital Algiers, precisely in the Ain Allah district.
• He was also implicated in the French Airbus hickajing at Algiers International Airport. He had been planning this hijack operation since his nomination as GIA chieftain of the province of Algiers.
• Once he took the helm of the GIA terrorist organization, Djamel Zitouni sought woefully to be diplomatic by sending a letter to the then French President Jacques Chirac urging him defiantly to embrace Islam as a religion.