He was born on April 13th, 1949, in Tifrit, near Akbou. His father was a martyr and his mother a maquis, who lived till she died tragically in a road accident while coming back home from the prison where her son was kept.

In the different testimonies on Haroun, people always evoke his intelligence.

Already eleven years since his disappearance, and Haroun Mohamed called Massin U Harun, has yet disappeared neither from the spirit of the people nor from the Kabyle collective memory. In every occasion in which we evoke the militants of Amazigh identity, U Harun is mentioned and without fear. The case of the “bomb-layers” set people free from fear and for a long time much ink had been spilled over the issue. For some people, Haroun Mohamed, Cheradi Hocine, Kaci Lounès, Medjber Mohamed U-Smaïl… were harmful crooks, for others they were a model of bravery and commitment to the struggle for liberty. In a letter published in the army newspaper “El-Djeich”, the author evoked this matter with euphemism. He compared it to sabotage actions. “Our security services have just succeeded a very beautiful haul of a net by proceeding to the arrest of the band of bunglers that dared to come in our capital to attempt to destroy, to murder and to create agitation in our country”. The sad author of this letter talked about a band of bunglers that dared to come in (their) capital. For Haroun who is a martyr’s son, the response is simple.

After paying tribute to the security services that had, according to him, succeeded a good blow, he wondered who these people were. Elsewhere, he replied to his own questions and said: “They have changed the name, the nationality, the acronym; they are known: O.A.S., S.O.A., Ignacio or Haroun, These murders, these adventurers are in reality armed, trained, financed by the secret services of the capitalist and imperialist governments that want to delay the development of our country and to depart it from its socialist principles”. A speech known by everybody and an “immoral” moral that lasted long in our country.

Haroun and his friends were imprisoned in the sinister tazoult-lambèse gaol. Arezki Aït Larbi’s letter to the Algerian minister of Justice of that period summarizes well the detention conditions of the prisoners of conscience. Aït Larbi is currently in justice conflict with Mr.Salat, an official in the ministry of Justice always for the same period. On this matter, we can mention the case of Haroun who preferred not to receive family visits, rather than to subject himself to the villainous law of the administration of the sinister penitentiary of Lambèse that deny him the right to speak in the Berber language with its visitors. Let us recall nevertheless that Haroun’s mother, a former maquis and a widow of an officer of the national liberation army (ALN), died in a road accident while going back home after she had visited her son.

In different testimonies on Haroun, we always evoke his intelligence. Haroun was an active militant within the Berber academy or Agraw Imazighen. The academy was an institution openly opposed to the regime of that period. It had played a main role in the awakening of the consciences of our generation towards the struggle for Amazigh identity, testify its militants.

Being among the Berberist militants arrested in December 1985, in the case of the Algerian League of the human rights, Muhand U Harun was in a total isolation since very long. Arezki Aït Larbi and Ferhat Mehenni asked the manager of the prison, if the decision of this isolation was a manner to continue to punish him for what he did more than ten years ago, or if it was motivated by other considerations. The administrator in question had then evoked Haroun’s health problems as pretext for his long quarantine.

When a militant told the director that the place of the patients was at the infirmary and not in an isolated place, Haroun was brought back the very day to a special room, where his friends could see him for less than five minutes.

To finish with, let us honour his memory and engrave his name in our History with light letters, eternity letters. Rest in peace, fight brother.

Written by : Mohamed Mouloudj
Source: La Dépêche de Kabylie – May 28th, 2007
Translation : D. Messaoudi