Former Algerian President Bouteflika dies at the age of 84

Veterans of the Algerian War of Independence ruled the North African country for two decades before resigning in April 2019.

After Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika stepped down on Friday under mass protests and pressure from the military for more than two years, the presidential palace said on Friday that he had passed away at the age of 84.

Bouteflika is a veteran of the Algerian War of Independence. After street demonstrations rejected his plan to seek a fifth term, he had ruled the North African country for twenty years before he resigned in April 2019.

Since his stroke in 2013, he has rarely appeared in public before leaving.

After Bouteflika’s resignation, in order to end the protests demanding political and economic reforms, the authorities launched an unprecedented investigation into corruption, leading to several senior officials including Bouteflika’s powerful brother and adviser Said. Was imprisoned.

After Algeria’s independence from France in 1962, former President Bouteflika became Algeria’s first foreign minister and an influential figure in the Non-Aligned Movement.

As the President of the United Nations General Assembly, Bouteflika invited former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to deliver a speech at the institution in 1974. This was a historic step towards international recognition of the cause of Palestine.

He also asked China to get a seat in the United Nations and criticized South Africa’s apartheid rule.

After the death of former President Houari Boumediene in the early 1980s, he went into exile and settled in Dubai as an advisor to members of the ruling family of the emirate.

He returned to China in the 1990s, when Algeria was being ravaged by a war between the army and armed Islamic militants, which killed at least 200,000 people.

Elected president in 1999, he managed to negotiate a truce with Islamists and launched a national reconciliation process allowing the country to restore peace. (Reported by Hamid Ould Ahmed; Richard Zhang and Grant Mai Edited by Kurt)