Ali Belhadj

Ali Belhadj (also Benhadj; Arabic علي بن الحاجبلحاج) was the Vice-President of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in Algeria.

Born in 1956 in Tunis to parents from the "wilaya" of Adrar in Algeria, Belhadj became a teacher of Arabic and an Islamist activist in the 1970s. He was imprisoned from 1983 to 1987. In 1989, after the Algerian Constitution was changed to allow multiparty democracy, he helped found the Islamic 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-Sunna mosque in Bab el-Oued, a popular district in Algiers.

In 1991, soon after FIS had finished a strike and massive demonstrations in Algiers, he, along with FIS president Abassi 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 the Algerian 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 to Iraq shortly after two Algerian diplomats (Ali Belaroussi and Azzedine 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 the Charter 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 against women working and condemned democracy as a Western innovation, while emphasizing the importance of Islamic education. He described his favorite authors as Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim, as well as the more recent Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid 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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