Ahmed Ben Bella, Algeria's First President, Dies

Reuters 
April 11 2012

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/39069/World
/Region/First-president-of-independent-Algeria-dies--
state.aspx

    Former Algerian President and independence hero
    Ahmed Ben Bella (L) chats with Venezuelan
    President Hugo Chavez during a United Nations
    sponsored forum on dialogue between nations in
    Caracas November 13, 2001, (Photo: Reuters).
    http://tinyurl.com/crrd7nd

Ahmed Ben Bella, Algeria's first president after the
country became independent from France half a century
ago, has died following an illness, state media
reported on Wednesday.

He was 96 and died at his family home in the Algerian
capital, according to the state-run news agency.

The son of peasant farmers who grew up near Algeria's
border with Morocco, Ben Bella was one of the leading
figures in the war for independence from France after
World War Two, and spent several years in French
prisons.

When France relinquished control of Algeria in 1962,
Ben Bella became president but he was unseated three
years later in an internal coup by Houari Boumediene, a
fellow independence fighter who took over as head of
state.

Ben Bella subsequently spent years in jail and exile
before returning to Algeria in 1999.

His death coincides with the 50th anniversary of
Algerian independence, a date which many Algerians see
as bitter-sweet because they feel the aspirations of
the country's founding fathers, embodied by Ben Bella,
have not been fully realised.

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