A staunch opponent, the hero of independence had sided with the Hirak from the start in 2019, a commitment that saw him be jailed for six months at the age of 86.
Between emotion and challenge, hundreds of Algerians paid tribute, Thursday, November 5, to Lakhdar Bouregaa, hero of the war of independence (1954-1962) and highly respected figure of Hirak, who died the day before, at the age of 87 years old, after being affected by Covid-19.
The emotion, palpable on social networks since the announcement of his hospitalization on October 21, was strongly expressed Thursday, near the cemetery of Sidi Yahia, in his town of residence in Hydra, on the heights of Algiers, and not in the square of the martyrs as some media had announced.
The fervor celebrated a man who “never surrendered.” She also showed a touch of defiance to the regime by resuming in chorus slogans and songs from the Hirak, the protest movement which Algeria was the scene of throughout 2019. “Bouregaa rest-toi, on va continue the fight ”,“ Civil status and not military! We could hear in the crowd. It was the first demonstration targeting the government since the November 1 referendum which ratified the constitutional revision. The very low turnout (23.7%) marked a persistent distrust of the regime.
“Grand patriot”
If the Algerian officials hailed the memory of a “great patriot” and of a “symbol of the national liberation struggle”, Lakhdar Bouregaa has never ceased to be an irreducible opponent of the regime set up in the independence of 1962 under the influence of what the Algerians call “the border army” as opposed to the fighters of the interior, of which he was one of the figures.
Born on March 15, 1933, in El Oumaria, about forty kilometers from Médéa, southwest of Algiers, Lakhdar Bouregaa, who did part of his military service with the Alpine hunters, in Briançon, deserted in 1956 and joined the National Liberation Army (ALN) fighting against France. He is an adventurer, a man of great bravery, according to the testimonies of his companions. He runs a shock company that has become legendary, the Zoubiria. He became chief of zone II of wilaya IV (Algiers) between 1959 and 1960, where he was deputy to Colonel Youcef Khatib, chief of the region until the end of the war in 1962.
The day after independence, he opposed the establishment of the single party under the FLN label and, along with Hocine Aït Ahmed, was one of the founding members of the Front des forces socialistes (FFS) in 1963. In 1967, following an attempted coup led by the former chief of staff, Tahar Zbiri, he was arrested. He was subjected to terrible tortures, which he will recount in his memoirs, Witness on the Assassination of the Revolution (ed. Dar Al-Hikma, Algiers, 2010). He was tried and sentenced in 1969 to ten years in prison for “conspiracy to assassinate [President] Houari Boumediène” and to twenty years in prison for his alleged participation in Zbiri’s coup attempt. He remained in prison until 1975.
New youth
The longtime opponent will experience a new youth with the popular protest movement, the Hirak, started on February 22, 2019 to contest the candidacy of Abdelaziz Bouteflika for a fifth presidential term and which then evolved into a peaceful and radical protest against the government. diet. Lakhdar Bouregaa, the great maquisard, quickly became one of the emblematic figures of this Hirak. Some do not hesitate to give him the quality of “the man of two revolutions”. He warns against the game of the regime, which has already chosen the identity of who will rise to the presidency. His exits displease the head of the army, the late Ahmed Gaïd Salah, who takes the reins of the country after the forced resignation of Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
He was arrested and imprisoned on June 30, 2019. He will remain there until January 2, 2020 on the grounds of “contempt of body” and “participation in an enterprise to demoralize the army with the aim of harming the defense. national ”.
His arrest sparked widespread anger and indignation. Lakhdar Bouregaa, for his part, opts for a logic of rupture, refusing to answer the examining magistrate. From then on, his release will become one of the demands of the Hirak demonstrations organized on Tuesdays and Fridays, rituals which will only be interrupted due to the coronavirus pandemic in mid-March 2020. The tributes are unanimous, as summarized on Twitter, Abdelaziz Rahabi. For the former diplomat and Minister of Culture and Communication (1998-1999), Lakhdar Bouregaa was a “patriot without concessions and tireless defender of the values of freedom and dignity” who “will have succeeded in passing on to the generations of Hirak the true meaning of his fight: independence remains incomplete without freedom ”.
