Sail Mohamed

Who was Sail Mohamed?

Sail Mohamed Ameriane ben Amerzaine was an Algerian and French anarchist who fought in the Spanish Civil War. The French writer Jacques Prévert dedicated a poem to him.

Born in Kabylie, French Algeria, Sail Mohamed served in the French Colonial Forces. He was arrested for insubordination and desertion during the First World War. He then moved to France, where he was an activist in the Union Anarchiste and the Confédération Générale du Travail-Syndicaliste Révolutionnaire and was founder with his friend Sliman Kiouane of the Committee for the Defence of Indigenous Algerians, one of the first national liberation movements in French North Africa

He was a passionate anti-Stalinist, rejecting support from the Red Aid, a front organisation of the French Communist Party, when he was prosecuted by the French authorities for an anti-militarist article.

In 1936, he served in the Sébastien Faure Century, the French-speaking section of the Durruti Column, an anarchist anti-Francoist militia in Spain. In October 1936, he becomes the general delegate for foreign groups, replacing Bethomieu who died in Perdiguera. He was wounded in November and got back to France in December, after sending many letters describing the anarchist movement in Spain. As soon as he got better, he took part in the conferences organised by the Union Anarchiste on the realisation of the Spanish revolution.