Ahmed Ben Bella

Biography

Ahmed Ben Bella was born in 1916 in Maghnia, western Algeria, to Moroccan parents. Schooled in Maghnia and Tlemcen, he enlisted in the French army in 1936, played one match for Olympique de Marseille, and in the Second World War won the Croix de Guerre in 1940 and the Médaille militaire for bravery at Monte Cassino.

The Sétif massacre of 1945 turned him to militant nationalism. With Messali Hadj's movement he helped found the Organisation Spéciale, led the 1949 robbery of the Oran post office to buy arms, and was jailed in 1950, escaping in 1952 to Cairo. There he became one of the nine leaders who launched the FLN in 1954, organising arms supplies and surviving French attempts to kill him, until French forces diverted his plane in October 1956 and imprisoned him until 1962.

After independence his faction, backed by Boumédiène's border army, took power from the provisional government; he became prime minister in September 1962 and was elected president unopposed in September 1963. He pursued Arab socialism, self-management of farms and industry, and close ties with Nasser and Castro, while facing the Sand War with Morocco and a Kabyle revolt led by the Socialist Forces Front.

Boumédiène overthrew him on 19 June 1965, and he spent fourteen years in detention and house arrest before his release in 1980. In exile he founded the Movement for Democracy in Algeria, returned home in 1990, and later served on the African Union's Panel of the Wise. He died in Algiers in 2012.