General Buchwalter ramblings

Statements of French General François Buchwalter who attributed, thirteen years later, the massacre of the seven monks of Tibhrine near Medea in 1996 to an Algerian ...military blunder... lack credibility

• Statements of French General François Buchwalter who attributed, thirteen years later, the massacre of the seven monks of Tibhrine near Medea in 1996 to an Algerian  “military blunder” lack credibility and complicate the Algerian-French relations already controversial, says Algerian newspapers.
   
  
      The Arabic newspaper “El Khabar” has criticized the statements of the French President Nicolas Sarkozy who asked the French courts to go in the investigation into the massacre of the monks.
  
      “The strong media coverage in France of the testimony of General Buchwalter is not innocent and reminds the media campaign on the issue of (who kills who)” in Algeria, said El Khabar.
  
      “The thesis of the Algerian military blunder in the massacre of the seven monks of Tibhrine is nearly science fiction. The facts as described by the French barbouze seem implausible. The last soldiers may reverse it if he knows a bit the usual protocols of military commitment,” wrote the editorialist of Liberté.
  
      According to the testimony of former French Defense Attaché in Algiers, the seven French monks of Tibhrine were not killed by the Islamist GIA but in a “smearing” of the Algerian army.
  
      The daily El Watan called the revelations of General Buchwalter “delusions” and questioned the reasons for the thirteen years of silence of the former Defense Attaché in Algiers.
  
      “Why did the French general in retirement François Buchwalter, keep the alleged secret all this time and declared it the end of last month, which is largely mediatise by the French press,” El Watan asked.
  
      The daily Expression described the revelations of General Buchwalter of “Fabulation”
• and felt that they further complicate the relations between Algeria and France which already “sufficiently controversial.”
  
  
      
  Ennaharonline / M. Oudina