Thousands of protesters march in Algiers despite announcement of presidential election

They braved the police. Friday, September 19, thousands of people demonstrated in Algiers, a few days after the announcement of a presidential election in December, a vote rejected by the protest movement. The latter excludes any election of a successor to Abdelaziz Bouteflika, pushed to resign in April, without a departure from the "system" in power for two decades.

Thousands of people were in the streets of Algiers in the middle of the afternoon. "The people want to overthrow Gaid Salah", "Put us all in prison", "The people will not stop," they chanted, referring to Ahmed Gaïd Salah, Chief of Staff of the army and real strong man of the country.

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Three movement figures stopped

Before the start of the demonstration, AFP photographers saw members of the security forces arrest several demonstrators near the Place de la Grande Poste, the flagship meeting point of the protest movement, in the city center. .

The police have increased in recent weeks arrests in Algiers before the start of Friday's weekly demonstrations. Three leading figures of the protest have been arrested recently in the space of a week. The police were strongly present in the center of the capital and on the axes leading to it. She stopped vehicles in the main streets of the capital, including the Grande Poste.

At the southwestern entrance of the capital, members of the security forces stopped cars coming from outside Algiers. On social networks, activists have reported a traffic jam stretching "several kilometers" at the entrances of the capital.

"Malicious intentions"

Ignoring the refusal of the protest movement to hold an election, the power has chosen the passage in force by announcing Sunday a new date for the presidential election, set for December 12.

On this occasion, he said that the army would now prevent protesters from other regions to join the processions in Algiers. This measure was denounced as "illegal" by Me Said Salhi, vice-president of the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights (LADDH). According to him, there is "no regulation in this sense, on the contrary: the Constitution guarantees Algerian citizens equality and freedom of movement."

With AFP