Algerian president returns home after week in French clinic

ALGIERS, Algeria – Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has returned home after a weeklong stay at a private clinic in France.

The president's office said Bouteflika, 79, who has used a wheelchair since a 2013 stroke, returned Tuesday to Algiers after completing "periodic medical tests" in Grenoble.

Each medical visit abroad, like his five-day stay in a Geneva clinic in April, feeds rumors.

This time there were unconfirmed reports of a neurosurgical intervention. A close ally, Djamal Ould Abbas, head of the National Liberation Front party, told reporters on Oct. 29 that "soon you will see (him) walk and talk, just as you once knew him."

Bouteflika has been re-elected three times since 1999, with the constitution modified to do away with presidential term limits.