Simon Malley

Simon Malley (May 25, 1923 – September 7, 2006), was a prominent francophone journalist and a strong supporter of Third World independence movements.

Malley was "one of the best known francophone journalists of his generation" and a "partisan, fearless and controversial" writer who spoke and wrote easily in both French and English as well as his native Arabic, according to his obituary in The Guardian of London.

Simon Malley was born in Cairo to a Jewish-Syrian family of modest circumstances. After graduating from high school, he became a journalist and was sent by an Egyptian newspaper to cover the United Nations. In New York City, he met his wife, Barbara, an American, when she worked for the United Nations delegation of the National Liberation Front (NLF), the Algerian independence group. Malley took up the cause of the NLF and was important in publicizing its cause.

Malley supported Gamal Abdul Nasser's revolution in Egypt in 1952, and Nasser made him the representative of the Egyptian daily newspaper Al Goumhouria in New York City.

He moved to France in 1969, where he founded the journal "Africasia" (its name was changed to "Afrique-Asie later on; he also began a second magazine called L'Economiste du Tiers Mondeand also then edited an English version which was called Africasia) and was led by his wife, Barbara Malley . The journal published reports from Third World areas which received relatively little coverage elsewhere, and its contributors included Third World economists and academics.

Malley became the "best known voice" of Third World anti-colonialist movements. He conducted a 20-hour interview with Fidel Castro, and long interviews with Yasser Arafat and Oliver Tambo. "At Non-Aligned Movement meetings other journalists had press passes; he had a delegate's pass", according to his obituary in The Guardian. One of the Third World movements that the magazine was friendly toward was the Palestine Liberation Organization.

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