Former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika buried in discretion in El-Alia cemetery
The convoy carrying the coffin of former Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika on September 19, 2021. AP - Fateh Guidoum
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
Former Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was buried this Sunday in the Martyrs' Square of the El-Alia cemetery, near Algiers, in the presence of President Tebboune and many senior officials.
The authorities had not decreed national mourning, preferring to keep a low profile for a man ousted from power by the streets and the army.
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The coffin was strapped to a gun carriage and covered with the Algerian flag, as is customary for the mujahedin, the veterans of the war of independence.
In front of him, a truck carrying eight officers at attention and a flowery armored vehicle pulling him, in the middle of a squad of bikers in full white uniforms.
► To read also: "Bouteflika has lived all his life around two obsessions: to conquer power and to keep it"
The funeral convoy arrived at El-Alia cemetery under the words of a public gathered along the road.
It is in this same cemetery that rest great figures of independence and all the former heads of state.
The whole government, but also President Tebboune, the Chief of Staff and foreign diplomats were there, around the Bouteflika family.
The Republican Guard fired several rounds.
Then the funeral oration was pronounced by the Minister of the Mujahedin and the coffin was laid in the ground.
A
minimum
ceremony
From all this emerged a general feeling of discretion.
As solemn as they were, the funeral of Abdelaziz Bouteflika did not have the prestige of those of his predecessors.
A ceremony at
a minimum
, no national mourning of eight days as for Ben Bella or Bendjedid, and far from the grandiose of Boumédienne's funeral.
A discretion that disappointed some friends of the former president, such as diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, former deputy secretary general of the UN, who said so at the microphone of RFI.
However, he predicted, "
we have not finished talking about the life and death of Abdelaziz Bouteflika
".
I would like to say that he never lost his head, he had lost his voice but he had never lost his faculties but he missed his exit.
He did not want to run for a fifth term.
Lakhdar Brahimi, former head of Algerian diplomacy and former deputy secretary general of the UN
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Algeria
Abdelaziz Bouteflika