'Hocine Aït Ahmed' () (b.
20 August 1926 in
Ain El Hammam,
Kabylie) is an
Algerian politician. He had achieved a
Ph.D. in
law when he split from the ruling
National Liberation Front (FLN) in 1963 to found the
Socialist Forces Front (FFS), a
secularist Berber Socialist party. Later that year he was arrested and sentenced to death, after briefly leading an armed uprising against
Ben Bella's
one-party regime, but he managed to escape from El Harrach prison in 1966.
He returned to Algeria from
exile in
Switzerland after the
riots of 1988, but left the country again after the assassination of
President Mohamed Boudiaf. During his presidential campaign in 1999, he suffered a
heart attack and was
hospitalized.