Background
Hadj was born in 1898 into an Algerian family of Turkish origin. In 1927 he was elected leader of an Algerian workers' association based in Paris. He attended the Anti-Imperialism Congress in Belgium that year, which created the League against Imperialism, and met with Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh. Back in France and in his native Algeria, then a French colony, Messali helped build an underground movement and work towards Algerian independence. In the 1920s he started Étoile nord-africaine (North African Star), one of the first modern Algerian nationalist organizations, and in 1937 he founded the Algerian People's Party (PPA). Both groups were suppressed by France, and in November 1937, Messali was put on trial for agitation, and imprisoned for several years.
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