Algeria: Tributes Paid to Late President Ahmed Ben Bella · Global Voices
Salah Almhamdi

Following the death of Ahmed Ben Bella, Arab netizens have remembered the man who was Algeria's first president.
Ben Bella died on April 11, 2012, after an illness. He was one of the symbols of the Algerian War of Independence and became president of Algeria in 1963. As hundreds flocked to Algiers to pay tribute to their former president, netizens remembered Ben Bella's rule.
Ahmed Ben Bella. Photo from Wikimedia Commons  (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Mahmoud Siyoucef said:
@mahmoudsiyoucef: ALGER VENDREDI 13 AVRIL…IL PLEUT SUR LA VILLE COMME IL PLEUT SUR MON COEUR…
The following video from Doualia.com shows the official funeral of Ahmed Ben Bella:
FreeTunis quoted Tunisia's president Moncef Marzouki who attended the funeral:
@FreeTunis: Marzouki: L’Algérie n'est pas la seule à avoir perdu BenBella. Le Grand Maghreb l'a perdu aussi, tout comme la nation arabe.
Lebanese journalist Hisham Melhem gave credit to Ben Bella for helping to achieve Algeria's independence but criticized his legacy:
@hisham_melhem: True, Ben Bella, Nasser & other Arab ‘revolutionaries’ gained independence, but they planted the seeds of cruel autocracy.
Blogger Issandr El Amrani wrote:
One after another, the liberation-era figures of Algerian politics are dying — the question is whether their successors will ensure that the same claustrophobic political system will survive.
Palestinian blogger Hisham Shafiq Skalla paid tribute to Ben Bella [ar]:
However, not everyone wanted to think about Ben Bella. Journalist Leila Beratto quoted a young man speaking on Algerian national television:
@LeilaBeratto: Obsèques de benbella (devant la tv): commentaire d'un algérien de 26 ans : “Même mort il continue de nous emmerder” algeriensEtPolitique
In the following video [ar, fr] from Doualia.com Algerians offer their final observations about Ahmed Ben Bella: