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Algeria

Algeria declares eight days of mourning for independence leader Ben Bella

Algerian President Abdelaziz Boutflika has declared eight days of mourning for Ahmed Ben Bella, the revolutionary who became Algeria's first president who died in Algiers Wednesday at the age of 96.

© AFP
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Before overthrowing Algeria's French colonial masters, Ben Bella served for as a French soldier for a time. He volunteered for service in the French army in the 1930s.

During World War II he fought alongside the Free French against Nazi occupation.

He was awarded a decoration by Charles de Gaulle but he refused to accept an officer's commission after the French quashed an uprising in the small town of Setif in 1945.

Ben Bella was a founding member of the underground organisation that fought colonial rule, the Organisation Spéciale, which later became the National Liberation Front (FLN), Algeria's ruling party.

After independence Ben Bella became even more popular.

AFP

Having been elected president in 1963, Ben Bella embarked on land reform, adopted socialist rhetoric, and - according to critics - promoted his own cult of personality.

In 1965 he was deposed by the army and placed under house arrest for 15 years.

He was then granted asylum in Switzerland where he lived for a decade before being allowed to return to his homeland in 1990.

In recent years Ben Bella had described himself as a moderate, peace-loving Islamist.

Even though he founded a one-party state, he later called for multiparty democracy.

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