Tens of thousands of people welcomed, Friday, January 1, the body of the opponent Hocine Aït Ahmed in his native village, 160 kilometers southwest of the capital. He who was one of the fathers of the independence of Algeria was to be buried early in the afternoon.

The body of Hocine Aït Ahmed, died December 23 in Lausanne, Switzerland, was repatriated on Thursday in Algiers, where the entire government honored him. A wake was held in the capital at the headquarters of his party, the Socialist Forces Front (FFS), which he founded in 1963 after breaking up with his brothers in arms who fought the French colonial power up independence in 1962.

On arrival of the funeral procession in the village of Ait Ahmed, the ambulance carrying civil protection body was greeted with shouts, in Kabyle or Arabic, for “today and tomorrow, Hocine remain alive! “And” Algeria, free and democratic! “. Many people were trying to touch the coffin, wrapped in the national flag.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, himself a veteran of the War of Independence, declared a national mourning eight days and funerals worthy of those of a head of state. These were broadcast live on national television, which contrasts with the fate of the man who was often bullied by the official media for his opposition to the regime.

Following the death of Hocine Aït Ahmed, the president of Algeria paid tribute to the “great man” who has “accomplished with abnegation and dedication to his duty and militant Mujahid”. Francois Hollande, President of France, hailed “one of the great historical figures [of Algeria], a leading architect of its independence and committed actor of political life.”

Ait Ahmed was the last survivor of the nine “son of All Saints’ heads that triggered the war of Algeria against the French colonial power, on 1 November 1954.

Hocine Ait Ahmed, warned in humanist, had particularly said in the June 2005 issue of the journal Together organ of the Cultural Association of popular education:

“Hunt the Blackfoot was more than a crime, a fault because our beloved country has lost its social identity. “

“Do not forget that religions, Jewish and Christian cultures were in Africa long before the Arab-Muslims, too colonizers, now hegemonic. With the Blackfoot and dynamism – and I mean the Blackfoot and not the French -, Algeria today would be a great African Mediterranean power. Alas ! I recognize that we have committed political and strategic errors. There was towards Blackfoot unacceptable faults, war crimes against innocent civilians and which Algeria must respond in the same way that Turkey against the Armenians. “