More than 1 000 judges have refused to oversee Algeria’s April 18 election if President Abdelaziz Boutifleka takes part in it.

Coming more than two weeks after anti-Bouteflika protests broke out across the North African country on February 22, the judges said in a statement published on Sunday that they were forming a new association "to restore the gift of justice".

"We announce our intention to abstain from ... supervising the election process against the will of the people, which is the only source of power," the statement read.

The 82-year-old Bouteflika, who who returned to Algeria on Sunday after undergoing medical treatment in Switzerland, faces the toughest fight of his 20-year-old rule.

The veteran head of state has rarely been seen in public since a stroke in 2013. Last April, he appeared in the capital Algiers in a wheelchair.

Bouteflika has offered to limit his term after the election and has vowed to change the "system" that runs the country. The promises, however, have failed to quell public anger, galvanising discontent among different sectors, particularly students and other young people.

Algerians from all social classes have rejected his plan to secure a fifth term in April elections, a move protesters feel would perpetuate a stale political system dominated by veterans of an independence war against France that ended in 1962.