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 of the murder of a forest warden, he was hunted and he joined the maquis under the nom de guerre of Si Rabah with Moh Nachid, Mohand Talah, Messaoud Ben Arab.

Twice sentenced to death by French tribunals in 1947 and 1950, he became the Kabylie responsible of the PPA-MTLD paramilitary organization founded in February 1947 by Messali Hadj, the Organisation Spéciale, at the head of 22 members of the resistance (maquisards).

Belkacem, who left Algeria after the battle of Algiers, formed an alliance with Lakhdar Ben Tobbal and Abdelhafid Boussouf against Abane Ramdane. He was the first to be Minister of Defense, then Foreign Minister, in the provisional Government of the Algerian republic (GPRA) in 1958, and later 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, Col. Houari Boumedienne, and Muhammad Khidr.

After the June 19th 1965 takeover by the Political Bureau, he goes back to the opposition, favouring more federalist views than Boumedienne's centralist policies. Accused to have organized an assassination attempt against Boumedienne, he is sentenced to death in absentia. He was found assassinated in 1970 in a hotel room in Frankfurt, Germany.

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