Ali Boumendjel

Following the recommendations of the report by historian Benjamin Stora on remembrance of French Algeria, on March 2, 2021, French President Emmanuel Macron recognized that Ali Boumendjel was "tortured and murdered" by the French army. The president received four of Ali Boumendjel's grandchildren to announce to them the recognition, on behalf of France, of his assassination. The press release evokes the confession of Paul Aussaresses to have ordered one of his subordinates to disguise the murder as suicide.

Boumendjel was arrested on February 9, 1957, and underwent over a month of torture at the hands of commandant Paul Aussaresses and his men. On March 23, in El Biar, outside Algiers, he was thrown from the sixth floor of a building; his death was passed off as a suicide. Forty-three years later, in 2000, Aussaresses admitted that Boumendjel had been murdered.

Born in Relizane to an educated family from Beni Yeni region, Boumendjel was educated at the Duveyrier college in Blida, where he met with other future figures of the Algerian revolution, such as Abane Ramdane, Benyoucef Benkhedda and Saad Dahlab. He then oriented his career toward law, and became a journalist for the Egalité journal, controlled by the integrationists of Ferhat Abbas. During the revolution he became, with Jacques Verges, one of many lawyers working for the Algerian nationalists. In 1955, he joined the National Liberation Front (FLN) with his old friend Abane Ramdane, after Ramdane was released from prison. Ramdane advised Boumendjel to change his professional orientation, so he joined the litigation department of Shell corporation, while still continuing his militantism in the FLN.

Ali Boumendjel (May 24, 1919 – March 23, 1957) was an Algerian revolutionary and lawyer.