Ahmed Ben Bella, the first president of independent Algeria and one of the 20th century's most vocal anti-imperialists, died Wednesday at the age of 95.
Ben Bella, who had recently been released from a hospital stay for respiratory problems, died at his family home in Algiers, state news agency APS reported.
"Today we lost one of modern Algeria's bravest leaders," said current President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in a message of condolence read on national television.
He declared an eight-day period of national mourning from Wednesday. The funeral will be held Friday at Algiers' El Alia cemetery after 1230 GMT.
Ben Bella's biographer Mohammed Benelhadj told AFP: "Ben Bella was in good shape yesterday, but then he felt very tired and went up to his room to sleep."
He said the ex-president died in his sleep around 3:00 pm (1400 GMT), with his daughters Mehdia and Noria at his side.
A hero of Algeria's independence from France, Ben Bella was president from 1963 to 1965, when he was overthrown by his defence minister, Houari Boumediene, a close ally of Bouteflika.
Born December 25, 1916 to poor farmers, Ben Bella was a school dropout who only learnt to read and write Arabic in prison.
He became involved in nationalist politics as a schoolboy, joining the Algerian People's Party of Messali Hadj.
"I entered politics at 15," he said in a 2001 interview with an Egyptian newspaper. "I was thrown in at the deep end."
He joined a colonial unit of the French army and served in World War II. He was decorated for shooting down a German plane over the French Mediterranean port of Marseille, and for his service in the battle of Monte Cassino in Italy in 1944.
After the war, Ben Bella became a leading member of the Special Organisation, founded to prepare for an anti-colonial uprising.
He was arrested after taking part in a robbery to obtain funds, escaped to Cairo, then was arrested again in 1956. He rode out the rest of the war in prison.
The impact of the increasingly horrific conflict led to France granting independence in 1962 and freeing Ben Bella, who became the new nation's first president a year later.
Charismatic and popular, he was a fervent advocate of the Non-Aligned Movement, alongside Cuba's Fidel Castro, India's Jawaharlal Nehru and Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser.
But he struggled as president to restore stability to the war-torn country, as some 1.5 million mainly French settlers -- who had run much of the trading and farming sector -- fled.
In June 1965, after less than two years in power, he was overthrown in a military coup led by former ally Boumediene.
Detained by the new regime, Ben Bella was placed under house arrest until 1980. He served a total of 24 years as a prisoner of both the French colonial government and its nationalist successors.
In 1971, while still being held, he married Zohra Sellami, a leftist journalist.
Ben Bella had since 2007 chaired the African Union's panel of experts tasked with advising the AU's peace and security council on conflict prevention and resolution.
He remained politically active until his death, but his health started deteriorating when Sellami died in 2010.
"Algeria has just lost a great man, an activist, a mujaheed (fighter)," Abdelaziz Belkhadem, secretary general of the National Liberation Front, Ben Bella's and Bouteflika's party, said on national radio.
"This death is a loss for Algeria and the world, especially at a time when Algeria is approaching a historic turning point aimed at peaceful change, which the president always wanted," said Miloud Chorfi, spokesman for Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia's party, referring to May 10 parliamentary elections.
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