Ali Benhadj

Born in 1956 in Tunis to parents of Mauritanian origin from the wilaya (province) of Adrar in Algeria, Belhadj became a teacher of Arabic and an Islamist activist in the 1970s. He had close ties to Mustafa Bouyali's Islamic Armed Movement (MIA), and was arrested in 1983 and sentence in 1985 by a state security court. In 1989, after the Algerian Constitution was changed to allow multiparty democracy, he helped found the FIS, an Islamic party which won the first (and so far only) free elections in Algeria since its independence. He was considered the co-head or number two leader of the FIS, along with president Abassi Madani. During this period, he was a preacher at the famous Al-Sunna mosque in Bab el-Oued, a district in Algiers.

In 1991, soon after FIS had finished a General strike and massive demonstrations in Algiers, he, along with FIS president Abassi Madani, was arrested and jailed on charges of threatening state security. In late 1991, FIS won the first round of parliamentary elections, which were then called off by the military, who banned FIS; Belhadj remained in jail throughout most of the Algerian Civil War that followed. In December 1994, the hijackers of Air France Flight 8969 demanded Ali Benhadj's release along with Abbassi Madani. The hijackers later dropped those demands in exchange for fuel to fly to France from Algeria. He was released only after serving a 12-year sentence in 2003 under the condition of abstaining from all political activity. Belhadj has been called a charismatic preacher.

He did not remain free for long; in July 2005, he was arrested for making a statement on Al-Jazeera which praised Iraqi insurgents and condemned Algeria for sending diplomats to Iraq shortly after two Algerian diplomats (Ali Belaroussi and Azzedine Belkadi) had been kidnapped. He was released just under a year later in March 2006, under the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation.

...
Wikipedia