Krim Belkacem

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Krim Belkacem

Krim Belkacem (Arabic: كريم بلقاصم) (September 14, 1922 - October 18, 1970) was an Algerian revolutionary fighter and politician.

He was born close to Draa el-Mizan in Kabylie, Algeria.

Accused for the murder of a forest warden, he was hunted and he joined the maquis under the pseudonym of Si Rabah with Moh Nachid, Mohand Talah, Messaoud Ben Arab. Twice sentenced to death by the French tribunals in 1947 and 1950, he became responsible of the P.P.A.-M.T.L.D. (paramilitary organization founded in February 1947 chaired by Messali Hadj) for the whole Kabilya. He was the leader of 22 members of the resistance (maquisards) who composed his état-major and who were multiplying direct contacts with activists and population.

Belkacem who left Algeria after the battle of Alger, formed an alliance with Ben Tobbal and Boussouf against Abane Ramdane. He was the first to be Minister of Defense then Foreign Minister with the provisional Government of the Algerian republic (GPRA) in 1958, and the principal Algerian negotiator of the agreements of Évian in March 1962. Belkacem was in opposition to the creation of the Political Bureau of the FLN in July 1962 by Ahmed Ben Bella, Colonel Houari Boumedienne, and Muhammad Khidr.

After the June 19th 1965 coup d'Etat, he goes back to the opposition, favouring more federalist views than Abu Midyan's/Boumedienne's centralist policies. Accused to have organized an assassination attempt against Boumedienne, he is sentenced to death in absentia. He was found assassinated probably under the order of the Algerian State in 1970 in hotel room in Frankfurt, Germany.

Belkacem was posthumously rehabilitated by being buried in the Carré des Martyrs on October 24th 1984.