The elderly Bouteflika was forced from office in 2019 by a mass protest movement called the Hirak, which demanded a change in top faces after he sought a fifth term despite his failing health.
Born in 1937 in Morocco to Algerian parents, Bouteflika joined the National Liberation Front in 1956, which was leading the fight against French colonial rule over Algeria. He became the administrative secretary of Houari Boumedienne, and three years after Algeria achieved independence in 1962, he helped with Boumedienne's coup d'etat against Ahmed Ben Bella and subsequently became Algeria's foreign minister.
He served in that role until 1974, when he became President of the United Nations General Assembly. After Boumedienne died in 1978, he was seen as one of two candidates likely to succeed him, but lost out to Chadli Bendjedid, an FLN colonel. In 1989, he was reassigned to the FLN Central Committee. He played little role in the civil war that began in 1992, but scored an unexpected victory in the 1999 presidential elections, the first since the civil war began. He remained in that office for 20 years, until being forced out in 2019.
A public ceremony in 1967 at which the US ambassador presents his credentials to members of the Algerian government, including Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Bouteflika (L), President Houari Boumedienne (C) and Chief of Staff of the President Djelloul Khatib (R).
As president, Bouteflika presided over Algeria's return to international prominence, including presiding over the African Union and helping to negotiate a peace treaty between Ethiopia and Eritrea. While his government undertook several large-scale infrastructure projects aimed at revitalizing the economy, it also oversaw the privatization of dozens of government-owned firms.
In 2013, he suffered a major stroke from which he never fully recovered, suffering aphasia that has prevented his speaking in public and confining him to a wheelchair. As he shrank from public appearances, it was widely rumored he was no longer anything more than a figurehead. His seeking a fifth term in 2019 set off the biggest protests in the country since the civil war era, forcing him to resign in April of that year.