Mohamed Boudiaf

Algerian political leader and one of the founders of the revolutionary National Liberation Front (FLN) that led the Algerian War of Independence. He is also known under the name Si Tayeb el Watani.

In July 1954, Boudiaf survived an assassination attempt by his former comrades-in-arms, wounded and left for dead on an Algiers sidewalk.

Boudiaf was exiled in Morocco soon after Algerian independence, and did not go back to Algeria for 27 years. He returned in 1992 to accept a prominent position from the military dictatorship, and was assassinated four months later, on 29 June 1992 at age 73.

The assassin was said to have acted as a lone gunman due to his Islamist sympathies. He was sentenced to death in a closed trial in 1995, but the sentence was not carried out. The murder has, unsurprisingly, been subject to significant controversy and a major magnet for Algerian conspiracy theories, with many suggesting that Boudiaf was in fact assassinated by the military establishment responsible for the coup (and for his installment as HCE chairman). These theories have centered on the fact that Boudiaf had recently initiated a drive against the corruption of the Algerian regime, and stripped several important military officials of their posts.