Algeria: The mysteries around the death of Houari Boumediene

"Health and Power, memories of a Kremlin doctor! "

      The revelations of Yevgeny Tchazov, the chief medical officer who headed the "Department 4" in charge of the health of communist leaders in the Kremlin, put back to date the still unresolved conditions of the death of President Houari Boumediène. He pleaded the thesis of poisoning. What justifies the reopening of an investigation ...

      Professor Tchazov's interview with the Arabic-language replica of the Russian international channel focused on his testimony about the care provided by the Soviet doctors to the Egyptian and Algerian Presidents, Nasser and Boumediene. A testimony recorded in his book recently published "Health and Power, memories of a doctor of the Kremlin", where he concluded, in essence, that "there is someone who would have helped President Boumediène to join the beyond.".

Why was the Algerian leader poisoned and by whom?

      Recall the context. It was just after the signing of Middle East Peace Agreements negotiated between Egypt and Israel at Camp David in the United States. President Boumediene had gone to U.S.S.S. for care on his return from a tour that had taken him to ten capitals in the Middle East and ended with a summit of the "Firm Front" (Syria, Libya, Democratic Yemen, PLO and Algeria), held in Damascus in September 1978.

      President Boumediène then undertook to rally the "wait-and-see". Advocating principled intransigence in order to keep the Palestinians desperate after Egypt's defection, the Algerian president relied heavily on a reconciliation between Syria and Iraq, which is critical to the credibility of a northern front against Israel.

The first suspect was unsuspected: Sddam Hussein!

      However, the Iraq of Saddam Hussein who fought against the Maghreb claim of leadership in the Front of Firmness, had flip-flopped and boycotted the summit at the last minute, putting Boumediene, who had invested some of his authority, in embarrassment .

      The Damascus summit had, in any case, ended in the reconciliation of Palestinians and Jordanians. And while the United States waved the threat of military intervention to ensure peace, the participants had decided to resort to the US. The geopolitical tension that followed had nearly caused another war in the region.

Secret and fear of lynching Russian doctors

      In short, Prof. Evgueni Tchazov remembered, at the height of his 84 years, the conditions under which he had received President Houari Boumediene (1932-1978), the secrecy to which the doctors entrusted to the U.S.S.R. had been subjected, and also the anguish took because of a rumor kept in the hospital where he was in Algiers. "We were afraid to be lynched if he died. The cream of the Soviet doctors was there to take the President Boumediène in charge. I had to call President Iouri Andropov (1914-1984) to tell him of my concerns if something happened to him. At the death of President Boumediène, a manager had brought us through the basement to get us out through a back door, " he said.

And the flight of French doctors

      Regarding the diagnosis and even though he maintained, without asserting, that the symptoms presented by the late Houari Boumediène resembled "poisoning", Pr Tchazov confessed, 35 years later, that the medical team is at his bedside. was revealed, at the time, "unable to diagnose his state of health." According to him, the late president told him that "he started to feel bad after eating on the plane". If he did not specify where the plane was when these signs of fatigue appeared on him, Pr. Tchazov did not fail to draw a parallel with the death of the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat  (1929-2004) as to the inadequacy of the diagnostic. "We had noticed the dysfunction of many of his vital organs and also a change in the chemical equation of his blood. We were in a critical state that was getting worse. We had accompanied him to Algiers. Other doctors had been brought from France but, "we could not understand his case," he said.

      Boumediene died a little over a month after his tour in the East. Will one day know the bottom of his death? Will his body be exhumed for reconsideration? It is the only solution, to tell the truth, to be able to specify the diagnosis and to elucidate the conditions of his death.

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*Lyas Hallas - Alger (Le Soir)