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Time - Man of the Year
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1993-04-08
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THE WEEK, Page 18WORLDWe Are All Going to Die
Algeria's President is killed just after uttering those words
A few seconds after Mohammed Boudiaf spoke the words "We are
all going to die," an assassin in uniform raised his submachine
gun and fired, killing the 73-year-old Algerian head of state.
Boudiaf may have thought he was merely making a philosophical
point in his address to a crowd at a cultural center in the
Mediterranean port city of Annaba. It was his first trip
outside Algiers since he took office after a military coup in
January. In the confusion and panic that followed, 41 other
people were wounded by gunfire and grenades.
Though the government was reticent, the Algerian media
reported that the killer was a member of the security service
who acted out of "religious conviction." Suspicion fell
naturally on the religious fundamentalists of the Islamic
Salvation Front, whose electoral victory last January was
aborted by a military coup. The Front was banned, and 10,000
suspected fundamentalists were arrested. Since then, militant
Muslims have killed as many as 100 soldiers and police officers.
In spite of the presumption that the fundamentalists were
behind the killing, some Algerians speculated that factions
inside the army could have been nervous about Boudiaf's
announced intention to investigate and punish high-level
corruption. Others thought members of the National Liberation
Front, the socialist party overthrown by the army, might have
ordered the assassination.
Ali Kafi, secretary-general of the organization of
veterans of the war for independence from France, was appointed
to replace Boudiaf as president of the five-member Supreme State
Council. But the armed forces remain in charge, and Defense
Minister Khaled Nezzar is really Algeria's top man.