Maurice Laban


Maurice Laban, a pied-noir, was a founding member of the Algerian Communist Party. In 1936, he joined the International Brigades to fight in the Spanish Civil War.
In the mid-1950s, he was a member of the Combattants de la Libération, the guerrilla group established by the PCA after the outbreak of the Algerian War. Along with Henri Maillot, another European member of the guerrilla group, he was among those killed when an informer betrayed their position to a unit of the French Army. The band were sighted near Lamartine, east of :fr:Orléansville|Orléansville, an area which had not previously contained guerillas. They were pursued and attacked outside the Muslim village of Boudouane; seven members of the group were killed, among them Laban and Maillot.