Protesters chanting "No to the police state!" and brandishing signs that read "Give us back our Algeria" clashed with police. Organizers said more than 400 people were briefly detained, but aside from some jostling between police and protesters no violence was reported.
The opposition said demonstrators' bold defiance of a long-standing ban on public protests in Algiers marked a turning point.
"This demonstration is a success because it's been 10 years that people haven't been able to march in Algiers and there's a sort of psychological barrier," said Ali Rachedi, the former head of the Front of Socialist Forces party. "The fear is gone."
Organizers said as many as 26,000 police were deployed to quash Saturday's rally, but that 10,000 people succeeded in gathering in the city center before the protest was broken up. Officials put turnout at 1,500.
Algeria has long been ruled by a repressive government and beset by widespread poverty and high unemployment - factors that helped foment popular uprisings that ousted leaders of two other North African nations in the past month. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign Friday after almost 30 years in power, and a "people's revolution" in Tunisia, Algeria's neighbor to the east, forced autocrat Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali into exile on Jan. 14.
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 73, is credited with helping the nation recover from a brutal Islamist insurgency that ripped the country asunder during the 1990s, killing an estimated 200,000 people.
But opponents say he should have long ago ended a state of emergency declared at the start of that civil strife, and is doing too little to use Algeria's vast oil and gas wealth to help the bulk of its 35 million people.
Last week, mindful of the Tunisian and Egyptian protests, Bouteflika said the state of emergency would be lifted in the "very near future." But the government says the ban on demonstrations in the capital would remain, and as word of Saturday's rally spread, officials repeatedly warned people to stay away.
The rally was organized by an umbrella group for human rights activists, unionists, lawyers and others. Organizers called it to press for democratic reforms without specifically calling for Bouteflika to resign, though some protesters chanted, "Bouteflika out!"
This article appeared on page A - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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