Bachir Hadj Ali, Algerian poet and political activist, was born in the Casbah of Algiers on December 10, 1920 to a family from Aït Hammad (Azeffoun) in Kabylia. He attended the Koranic school and the French school but, to help his family, in 1937 decided not to enter the Normal School for Teachers. After his demobilization, in 1945 he joined the Algerian Communist Party (PCA). In 1948 he became editor-in-chief of the newspaper Liberté, the central organ of the PCA, joined its secretariat in 1951 and was in 1953 sentenced to two years in prison by the colonial courts for endangering state security.