Abassi Madani, founder of Algeria's banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), will be buried in the capital Algiers on Saturday days after his death in Qatar where he lived in exile, a security source said.
Madani had called for armed struggle in 1992 after Algeria'smilitary scrapped the country's first multi-party parliamentary election whichthe FIS had won, and pushed for the creation of an Islamic state in the NorthAfrican nation.
"Abassi Madani will be buried today Saturday in the ElAlia cemetery," in an eastern suburb of the capital near the airport, asecurity source told AFP on condition of anonymity. A source close to thefamily said Madani's body would arrive from Doha at around 1125 GMT and wouldbe taken to his home in the central Belcourt neighborhood of Algiers before theburial.
Senior FIS figure El Hachemi Sahnouni said Madani could beburied either at the El Alia cemetery or the Sidi Mohamed cemetery close to hishome. He died in a Doha hospital on Wednesday from a "long illness"at the age of 88, FIS co-founder Ali Belhadj said.
The FIS had been on track to win an absolute majority in the1991-92 parliamentary election when the army cancelled the second round,triggering a decade of civil war that left 200,000 dead, according to officialfigures. Madani had been living in Qatarsince 2003. He had fled into exile after serving a 12-year prison sentence inAlgeria on charges predating the election.
For Algerians, Madani remained most associated with the bloodletting during the civil war that pitted the security forces against sometimes feuding Islamist armed groups. He was imprisoned in 1991 and only called for an end to the violence in 1999, when his group said it was laying down its arms.
