in retrieving its identity after years of colonization. He was elected as the 1st president of l'UGEMA (Union Générale des étudiants Musulmans Algériens). Later he was appointed member of "Fédération de France", the FLN representation in France. No wonder that in February 1957 he was arrested and imprisoned in Paris. During almost 5 years in French prisons, he developed friendship in so far as brotherhood with other inmates who will later become the elite of a free Algeria. In September 1961 he was liberated and spent few months overseas, among other places, in Switzerland, Tunisia, and Morocco to physically heal from illness caused by years of incarceration. Algerian doctor In 1962 he pursued his career as a doctor in the main hospital of Algiers. After the independence, in July 1962, Ahmed continued his work of reforming, renovating the hospital, teaching the next generation of Algerian doctors, and learning from foreign professors who chose to remain in independent Algeria. Moreover, during the next 3 years, he received many enticing offers to be Ambassador, and had other senior government positions offered to him which he refused because he wanted to stay with his family which he missed from all those years of war and separation. Even the-then first President of Algeria, Ahmed Ben Bella, made several overtures to Ahmed so he works with him. Ahmed politely declined the offer and made it clear that he wished to continue practicing medicine rather than engage in Politics. In addition, Ahmed had the financial responsibility to find housing for his parents and ailing sister, and share his meager salary with them. Though inconceivable and oddly paradoxical for someone of the stature of Sheikh Bachir Ibrahimi – a prominent scholar who spent all his life fighting and suffering along with his family to render Algeria a free and prosperous nation – the family was hard-pressed to find a place to live in an independent Algeria. This was indeed not a coincidence at all in as much as the-then President Benbella was hostile to Sheikh Bachir and his son Ahmed because the latter did not agree with his policies in general, and the extreme socialism that the President adopted in particular. Torture under Benbella Following the orders of President Benbella, Ahmed was arrested and jailed in Algerian prisons in July 1964. These horrible 8 months were considerably worse than the 5 years spent in French prisons. Indeed,