Former Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has died at the age of 84, the president said on Friday, more than two years after he stepped down under massive protests and pressure from the military.
Bouteflika, a veteran of Algeria’s war for independence, ruled the North African country for two decades before his resignation in April 2019, when street demonstrations scuttled his plans for a fifth term. He was rarely seen in public before his departure after a stroke in 2013.
Following Bouteflika’s resignation, to end protests demanding political and economic reforms, authorities launched an unprecedented corruption investigation that led to the imprisonment of several senior officials, including Bouteflika’s powerful brother and adviser. Saeed has been jailed for 15 years, including for conspiring against the state.
Following Algeria’s independence from France in 1962, former President Bouteflika became Algeria’s first foreign minister and an influential figure in the Non-Aligned Movement, which gave a global voice to Africa, Asia and Latin America.
As President of the United Nations General Assembly, Bouteflika invited former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to address the body in 1974, a historic step towards international recognition of the Palestinian cause. They also demanded that China be given a seat at the United Nations, and jailed for its protest against the apartheid regime in South Africa.
He supported post-colonial states, challenged what he saw as the hegemony of the United States, and helped his country seed-bed the idealism of the 1960s. They also welcomed Che Guevara and a young Nelson Mandela Received first training in Algeria. The Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, who fled the US police, was sheltered.
In the early 1980s, Bouteflika went into exile after the death of former president Houri Boumedin and settled in Dubai, where he became an advisor to a member of the emirate’s ruling family. He returned home in the 1990s when a war broke out between the military and armed Islamist militants in Algeria that killed at least 200,000 people.
Elected president in 1999, he managed to strike a deal with the Islamists and begin a national reconciliation process that could restore peace to the country.
Bouteflika joined the freedom struggle against France at the age of 19 as the tutelage of Commander Boumedin, who became president in 1965. After independence, Bouteflika became Minister of Youth and Tourism at the age of 25. The following year he was made foreign minister.
Little is known about his personal life, with official records not mentioning a wife, although some accounts say that a marriage took place in 1990. For years Bouteflika lived with her mother Mansoorya in an apartment in Algiers, where she prepared her own meals.
Bouteflika had used oil and gas revenues to quell internal discontent, and the state he ruled became more peaceful and prosperous, leading, for some time, to the “Arab Spring” unrest that swept across the region in 2011. I overtook the leaders.
But corruption flourished and Algerians grew in anger over the political and economic turmoil, fueling mass protests that eventually ended Bouteflika’s presidency.
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