Anwar Haddam

Who is Anwar Haddam?

Anwar Haddam was a leader of the Islamic Salvation Front, an Islamist party in Algeria, and was elected to parliament on a FIS ticket in 1991 - Algeria's first multiparty elections. The dissolution of the FIS by military decree after its electoral victories in 1991-92 triggered the Algerian Civil War. Haddam spent most of the war years in exile in the United States of America, acting as a main figure in the party's political leadership. Algerian authorities unsuccessfully sought his extradition.

In 2004 Haddam resigned from FIS, and in 2007 co-founded the Movement for Liberty & Social Justice.

A student and a disciple of the late Algerian thinker Malek Bennabi, Haddam has been involved with the Algerian Islamic Movement since 1972, and is one of the pioneers in its participation in the political arena. A nuclear physicist, he was a faculty member of the Physics Department of the University of Science and Technology of Algiers before being elected to the Algerian Parliament in December 1991 on behalf of the Islamic Front for Salvation.