Category Archives: Algeria

Algeria’s first President and one of six historic leaders of the bloody independence struggle from France who has passed away in his family home in the capital Algiers at the age of 96, was a symbol of pan-Arabist ideology as well as the global anti-colonial movement, and president of Algeria from 1963 until he was overthrown in a military coup in 1965 by the army chief of staff, Col. Houari Boumedienne. Until 1980 Ben Bella was under house arrest but later went into self-exile in Switzerland until 1990 when he returned to Algeria. A giant of Algeria’s independence struggle, he played only a symbolic role in the latter years of … Continue reading →