Ahmed Ben Bella, ex-Algerian leader, dies

ALGIERS, Algeria -- Ahmed Ben Bella, Algeria's first president and a historic leader of its bloody independence struggle from France, died at his family home in Algiers yesterday. He was 95.

Family members and the state news agency did not give the cause of death, but twice in the last month Ben Bella had been treated at the military hospital of Ain Naadja for discomfort.

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, Col. Houari Boumedienne.

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.

A giant of Algeria's independence struggle and the country's first few years, he played only a symbolic role in the latter years of his life, heading the opposition Movement for the Democracy in Algeria Party, which competed in the aborted 1991 elections, winning just 2 percent of the vote.

His party was banned in 1997, but he continued to live in Algeria, often condemning government policies.

He was present when the current president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, was sworn in for his third term in April 2009.

Aside from Bouteflika, Ben Bella was the country's sole civilian leader and was followed by a string of generals. -- AP