Algerian Rebels Execute Seven French Monks

Seven French monks kidnapped two months ago from a monastery in Algeria were executed this week by Islamic militants in the worst massacre of foreigners there since 1993, French officials said Friday.

The announcement sent waves of shock and anger through France, where Muslims, Roman Catholics and Jews had conducted dozens of prayer vigils and appealed to the guerrillas to spare the captives, who ranged in age from 59 to 82.

“Those who kidnapped these men and then, in cold blood, decided to finish them off bear a horrifying responsibility,” said Herve de Charette, the French foreign minister. “Never will these crimes be erased from our memory. And the memory of France is long.”

The Armed Islamic Group, or GIA, the most violent of the Islamic rebel groups fighting the Algerian government, said in a communique Thursday that it had “cut the throats” of the monks after French authorities refused to negotiate the men’s release.

The bodies have not been found, but French officials said they believed the GIA statement because it referred to an audiocassette secretly delivered on April 30 to the French Embassy in Algiers.

All seven men are heard speaking on that tape, which was recorded on April 20, according to the news service Agence France-Presse, quoting sources close to the investigation. One of the monks reportedly said: “If you don’t negotiate, they are going to kill us.”

“The horrible news, I fear, is confirmed,” De Charette said in a statement to the Catholic newspaper La Croix.

The extremists, who blame France for supporting the Algerian government and blocking the creation of an Islamic state, had earlier offered to free the monks if France would release jailed Algerian militants and persuade the Algerian government to free a former GIA leader now sentenced to death.

The French government had refused to make any deals with the GIA.

Religious leaders in France had banded together to condemn the March 27 kidnappings.

On Thursday night, Paris Archbishop Jean-Marie Lustiger blew out seven candles that had been lighted for the monks last month at Notre Dame Cathedral by Catholics, Muslims and Jews.

“The candles represented the hope for their lives,” Lustiger said. “I wanted them to burn forever.”

He appealed “to the intelligence and heart” of the Islamic guerrillas to “chase away their hate.”

The slayings, which brought to 39 the number of French citizens killed in Algeria since civil war broke out in 1992, are likely to stiffen the French government’s resistance to negotiating with Algerian terrorists and strengthen its resolve to crack down on Islamic fundamentalism within its own borders.

The news was also a setback for Algerian President Liamine Zeroual, who since his election last fall has tried to combat attacks by Islamic militants and restore order in the North African country, a former French colony.

French officials on Friday renewed their standing call for their citizens to leave Algeria. Most French nationals fled the country in 1994. Of the 8,400 French who remain, about 300 are with religious orders.

The Trappist monks, one of whom was an 82-year-old doctor, lived in a monastery near Medea, about 45 miles south of the capital, Algiers. They were the last Algeria-based members of the order, and the monastery had survived three wars. During the Algerian war for independence from France, the monks had treated wounded guerrillas.

Gilles Couvreur, a priest in charge of relations between France’s Catholics and Muslims, said the monks “may have been reduced to silence, but their lives screamed that love was stronger than hate.”

“My heart bleeds,” said Armand Veilleux, head of the Trappist order. “This is a huge blow for our order and for relations between the [Catholic] Church and Islam.”

Pope John Paul II had been among those who appealed for the monks’ release.

On Friday, the Vatican condemned the killings, calling them “one of the saddest chapters in the history of Algeria.”

Also on Friday, the Islamic High Council in Paris issued a statement expressing its “anger and profound sadness in the face of this abominable murder.”

The killings were also denounced by Rabah Kebir, a leader of the outlawed Algerian guerrilla group the Islamic Salvation Front, or FIS.

“I strongly condemn this criminal act, which runs absolutely contrary to the principles of Islam,” Kebir said in a statement from Bonn. Kebir had earlier demanded that the GIA free the monks.

The GIA, which in 1993 demanded that foreigners leave Algeria, has claimed responsibility for the deaths of more than 100 foreigners in the country during the four-year war.

About 50,000 Algerians have died in the war, which began when Algerian authorities canceled a general election that the FIS was poised to win.