- Ali Belhadj
Ali Belhadj (also Benhadj; Arabic علي بن الحاجبلحاج) was the Vice-President of the
Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) inAlgeria .Born in 1956 in
Tunis to parents from the "wilaya " of Adrar inAlgeria , Belhadj became a teacher of Arabic and an Islamist activist in the 1970s. He was imprisoned from 1983 to 1987. In 1989, after theAlgerian Constitution was changed to allowmultiparty democracy , he helped found theIslamic Salvation Front (FIS), an Islamic party which won the only ever free elections in Algeria since its independence. During this period, he was a preacher at the famous Al-Sunnamosque inBab el-Oued , a popular district inAlgiers .In 1991, soon after FIS had finished a strike and massive
demonstration s in Algiers, he, along with FIS presidentAbassi Madani , was arrested and jailed on charges of threatening state security. In late 1991, FIS won the first round of parliamentary elections, which were then called off by the military, who banned FIS; Belhadj remained in jail throughout most of theAlgerian Civil War that followed, and was released only after serving a 12-year sentence in 2003 under the condition of abstaining from all political activity.He did not remain free for long; in July 2005, he was arrested for making a statement on
Al-Jazeera which praised Iraqi insurgents and condemned Algeria for sending diplomats toIraq shortly after two Algerian diplomats (Ali Belaroussi andAzzedine Belkadi ) had been kidnapped [http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6E7CE69B-1239-4212-A6C9-52CCE48AA3F2.htm] . He was released [http://za.today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-03-07T070818Z_01_ALL725628_RTRIDST_0_OZATP-ALGERIA-ISLAMIST-20060307.XML] just under a year later in March 2006, under theCharter for Peace and National Reconciliation .Representing a
Salafist wing of FIS, and seen as the spiritual leader of the most hardline factions of the party, he was againstwomen working and condemneddemocracy as aWest ern innovation, while emphasizing the importance of Islamic education. He described his favorite authors asIbn Taymiyya andIbn al-Qayyim , as well as the more recentHassan al-Banna andSayyid Qutb .Ali Belhadj is a role model for many millitant Muslims because of the strenght of his personality that helped him to continue his struggle despite being diagnosed with neurosyphilis in the mid eighties.
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