Egypt
What was the nationality of Henri Curiel before Jan 1942?
Henri Curiel Henri Curiel ( 13 September 1914 – 4 May 1978 ) was a left-wing political activist in Egypt and France . Born in Egypt , Curiel led the communist Democratic Movement for National Liberation until he was expelled from the country in 1950 . Settling in France , Curiel aided the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale and other national liberation causes , including in South Africa and Latin America . In 1978 Curiel was assassinated in Paris ; his murderer has never been identified . Biography . Early life and family . Curiel was born in Cairo to an Italian Sephardic family . He became an Egyptian citizen in 1935 . His brother Raoul Curiel became a respected archaeologist and numismatist , specializing in Central Asian studies . A cousin was Eugenio Curiel , a physicist and anti-fascist militant who was murdered in Italy in 1945 . Another cousin was the noted British KGB spy George Blake . The latter said that the older Curiel had been influential as a communist in shaping his political views , as Blake met him as a teenager . His son is the French journalist Alain Gresh , who was born in Cairo in 1948 and grew up in Paris . Political career in Egypt . In 1943 Curiel founded the communist Egyptian Movement for National Liberation ( HAMETU ) الحركه المصريه للتحرر الوطني حمتو , which in 1947 became the Democratic Movement for National Liberation ( HADETU ) . He was repeatedly arrested , along with many other communists . Despite his Egyptian citizenship , he was forced to emigrate in 1950 . The Democratic Movement for National Liberation was an active participant in the 1952 revolution led by the free officers and Gamal Abdel Nasser . The revolutionary council and the free officers had many members from HADETU ; the most eminent of these were Khaled Mohy el din خالد محي الدين , Yousef Sedeek يوسف صديق and Ahmed Hamroush احمد حمروش . Curiel settled in France and led a circle of Jewish communist emigres from Egypt known as the Rome Group . Anti-colonial activism in Paris . Curiel worked for the Jeanson network which supported the Front de Libération Nationale ( FLN ) during the Algerian War ( 1954–62 ) . He was arrested by the French security services in 1960 . Curiel was a founder of Solidarité , a support group for various anti-colonial and opposition movements in the Third World ( in particular Africa and Latin America ) , such as the African National Congress ( ANC ) . In 1976 he initiated contacts with Israeli and Palestinian representatives willing to negotiate a mutual recognition . Several meetings , later known as the Paris talks , were organized . Under the chairmanship of Pierre Mendès France , they included Issam Sartawi , adviser to Yasser Arafat ; and Uri Avnery and Mattityahu Peled , members of the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace ( ICIPP ) . On 21 June 1976 , Georges Suffert published an article in Le Point reporting Curiel as the head of the terrorist support network , connected with the KGB . He was put under house arrest in Digne , an administrative measure that was lifted once the accusation was demonstrated to be untrue . An American CIA report from 1981 ( a Special National Intelligence Estimate ) said that Curiels organization has provided support to a wide variety of Third World leftist revolutionary organizations , including false documents , financial aid , and safehaven before and after operations , as well as some illegal training in France in weapons and explosives . The authors further comment that his groups association with non-communist and nonviolent leaders , including clergymen , has tended to cloak the nature and extent of its operations . Assassination . Henri Curiel was assassinated in Paris on 4 May 1978 . Two far-right groups ( OAS and the Charles Martel Group ) claimed responsibility , but the case is still unsolved . Police and journalistic investigations suggest other suspects : - Jean-Pierre Maïon , a French criminal linked to the SDECE and the OAS , who worked as an informant for Lucien Aimé-Blanc , may have killed Henri Curiel on behalf of a Spanish death squad - Abu Nidal group ( it allegedly later shot Issam Sartawi ) , allegedly commissioned by the KGB - South African Bureau of State Security ( because of Curiels aid to the ANC ) Henri Curiel is buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery , Paris . Curiels work in promoting dialogue between the PLO and left-wing Israelis was continued throughout the 1980s by the Comité Palestine et Israël Vivront , headed by Sorbonne lecturer Joyce Blau – Curiels close associate and fellow Egyptian exile . In fiction . Henri Curiel appears in several parts of the 1982 spy thriller Shadow of Shadows by Ted Allbeury , whose plot is focused on George Blake . Allbeury takes at face value the assertions of Curiel having been a KGB agent , and assumes that for some time in the 1950s Curiel was Blakes KGB contact – for which there is no historical proof of any kind .