Algeria mourns first president Ben Bella

Algeria was in mourning on Thursday after the death of its first post-independence president Ahmed Ben Bella, hailed as an anti-colonialist hero and the father of the nation. The body of Ben Bella, who died at home on Wednesday at the age of 95 following a recent hospital stay for respiratory problems, was taken to the People’s Palace in Algiers where it will lie in state for 24 hours. State television showed Ben Bella’s flag-draped coffin being carried by six senior army officials, who were followed by his two daughters Mehdia and Noria. “Farewell, father to Algerians,” proclaimed L’Expression newspaper, which like other media outlets extolled Ben Bella and the profound mark he left on the north African country. Current President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who said Algeria had lost one of its bravest leaders, went to the People’s Palace to greet the coffin. Bouteflika on Wednesday declared an eight-day period of national mourning, with Ben Bella’s funeral to be held on Friday. The charismatic Ben Bella, a symbol of pan-Arabist ideology as well as the global anti-colonial movement, was president of Algeria from 1963 until he was overthrown in a military coup in 1965 by the army chief of staff, Colonel Houari Boumedienne, a close ally of Bouteflika, Ben Bella was under house arrest until 1980, and he went into self-exile in Switzerland until returning to the country in 1990 as part of the opposition to the ruling political party he helped found. His military experience began when he joined a colonial unit of the French army and served in World War II, for which he was decorated for shooting down a German plane over the French Mediterranean port of Marseille and for his service in the battle of Monte Cassino in Italy in 1944. After the war, Ben Bella became a leading member of the Special Organisation, founded to prepare for an anti-colonial uprising. He was arrested after taking part in a robbery to obtain funds, escaped to Cairo, then was arrested again in 1956. France granted independence in 1962 and freed Ben Bella, who became the new nation’s first president a year later.