By Hassan Alaoui
Thirty-two years ago to the day, on Monday June 29, 1992, Algerian President Mohamed Boudiaf was coldly assassinated in Annaba, at point blank range while he was giving a speech – his last obviously – in front of television cameras . He had built a little life as an exile in a Morocco which showed him fraternal hospitality, solidarity and support…
This live murder was committed by one of his bodyguards, second lieutenant Lambarek Boumaarafi, known as Abdelhak, of the Special Intervention Group (GIS, elite troop of the secret services) who acted under the command of Toufik Medine, the criminal general of his state and irremovable boss at the time of the secret services (DRS). “ Abdelhak “, his creature had acted on orders, of course, contrary to what was said at first, namely a ” isolated act » ! In fact, the DRS, in its obsessive culture of lies, had tried in vain to present the assassin as an Islamist fanatic. It was the height of fraud, as if Mohamed Boudiaf were an adversary or the enemy of the Islamists.
The year 1992 indeed constituted the sinister apogee of the general ” Toufik » confronted with the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and the beginnings of the “ black decade ” which would cause almost 100,000 deaths. Mohamed Boudiaf had not spent more than six months after his return to Algeria before being publicly shot, while he wanted to serve his country and his people, as if in a last gasp, happy at last to be next to his people after having spent a little over 30 years in Kenitra, voluntarily withdrawn from politics. He had created a small construction company, a brickyard to be precise, imposing on himself an almost Spartan pace of life, getting up every morning at 5 o’clockregularly performing his prayer before joining his “ made »…His wife Fatiha, his children lived with him cultivating a bit of nostalgia for Algeria.
It was the Algerian military who, almost imploring him, had asked Mohamed Boudiaf to return to Algeria. The situation in 1992, particularly after the departure of Chadli Bendjedid, was catastrophic. His mission was to restore trust with the people, to succeed in the audacious gamble of national reconciliation, especially since these same people – after having been put under wraps during the Boumediene years – aspired to a better existence and, already, could not stand the leaden blanket imposed on them by the military power. The late Boudiaf was known for his honesty and his intellectual rigor, a son of the people he was born, a son of the people he had remained. He was enthusiastic about returning to his country, to have to serve his people from whom he had been separated against his will in the aftermath of the Algerian Revolution, this revolution that had been confiscated by Boumediene and his cronies.
A significant episode in this movement in the history of Morocco and Algeria which takes us back, is that of this episode of the plane which in 1955 was to embark the Algerian fighters in the direction of Tunisia, which plane had been intercepted by France and its passengers taken to Aulnay prison, France. These are Mohamed Boudiaf, Rabah Bitat, Mohamed Khider, Ahmed Ben Bella and Houcine Aït Ahmed…The Algerian power, in other words Boumediene and his paid, never stopped deceiving the Algerian people and the Maghreb community, claiming to all the time that the King of Morocco, the late Mohammed V and the Crown Prince Moulay Hassan (Hassan II) had become the accomplices of France to stop in full takeoff the 5 Algerian nationalist activists leaving for Tunis where a meeting was being held. inter-Maghreb meeting.
The height of lies, real disinformation! Because in this plane, King Mohammed V had demanded to be there and to be part of it. It was, as Houcine Aït Ahmed would later officially say, who dissuaded him, insane. The video of this statement by Houcine Aït Ahmed on French television where he denies the false allegations of Boumediene’s services still exists. We suspect that if the King of Morocco had bad intentions towards the Algerian leaders, would he risk his own life to impose himself with them on the plane… This episode is lamentable, it already predicted the hostility of the Algerian tarantulas and in particular Boumediene. The historical truth imposes itself and Houcine Aït Ahmed wanted to restore it in the name of the memory of the people, Moroccan and Algerian. He paid vibrant tribute to Sultan Mohammed V, to his courage, his support, his exemplary solidarity.
Mohamed Boudiaf in forced exile had found refuge in Morocco, his host country but which had become his beloved land that he defended tooth and nail. The Algerian military had never forgiven him for his relative proximity to King Hassan II, anxious to one day reach a settlement of the Sahara problem. Boudiaf escaped the clutches of the Algerian army and the power of Boumediene, who, inspired by Stalin, had almost liquidated or imprisoned all those who embodied his counter-power: Aban Ramdan – originally from Kabylie – assassinated in Morocco in an attack, Mohamed Khider, Krim Belkacem “liquidated” one in Madrid in 1967 the other in Frankfurt in 1970, Ferhat Abbas the president of the GPRA, Benkhedda, Ben Bella. We must also recall the bloody ambush into which Kasdi Merbah, a former formidable and dreaded ” patron » of the DRS, a native of Fez who almost succeeded in the feat of reaching a political settlement with the Islamists of Fez but who was assassinated in front of his home in Algiers by the generals. He would fall under the bullets of the henchmen of « Toufik » Mediene, de Nizar and Larbi Belkheir…these three colorful generals who had embodied the bloodiest repression and the real genocide of the country’s elite. We are a few months or even a few weeks between the arrival of Boudiaf in Algiers and the methodical takeover of power of the ” services ” by Mediene who, lurking in the shadow of a Soviet-style secret police, a more cruel KGB type, was already raging without scruples. Mohamed Boudiaf had already understood and disapproved from Morocco of the generals’ little mafia games and had forced himself to fight against corruption and combat this nomenclature of ” patrons ” of the army which had control over colossal fortunes and fiefdoms in the sectors of meat, pharmacy, imported medicine, milk, weapons etc… Which is what the two authors of the book ” Algerian Evil », Jean-Louis Levet and Paul Totlila explore and dissect with talent and unfailing objectivity. This book constitutes a true and bitter journey into the twists and turns of a regime which no longer knows where to turn, plunged into a sad passion of its leaders, themselves victims of their blindness.
Mohamed Boudiaf was keen to implement reforms in domestic policy, to put an end to this rampant corruption of the generals, and in foreign policy to renew with a tradition of Maghreb solidarity of which, in the past, he had been one of the instigators, demonstrating his desire to resolve the question of the Sahara with Morocco. This was to misunderstand the Algerian military who, and refuse to willinglyhad deep down a contempt for him, even a terrible hatred. So much so that assassinating him was the only way to block his path, to prevent him from making peace with Morocco, from building this dream that he had always cherished, namely a Maghreb of federated peoples, democracy and above all power to civilians in Algeria. Which the Hirak has never stopped demanding.
