Kasparov lashes out over police action

Russian opposition leader Garry Kasparov lambasted Russian authorities today over violent crackdowns at anti-Kremlin demonstrations last weekend, accusing police who beat and detained protesters of “brutality and cruelty”.

Kasparov, a vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin, met with prosecutors he said had summoned him in connection with an MP’s demand for an inquiry into whether police acted illegally when they detained the former world chess champion during a Moscow protest on April 14.

Police held Kasparov for hours after detaining him as he tried to enter a central square in defiance of authorities who had barred protesters from meeting there.

He was one of hundreds of people detained by police, who beat dozens with truncheons during the Moscow rally and after a demonstration in St Petersburg the following day – the latest in a series of so-called Dissenters’ Marches that Kasparov helped organise.

The crackdown has drawn widespread criticism from human rights groups and reinforced opposition contentions that the government is strangling democracy and suppressing dissent before December parliamentary elections and a presidential vote next March.

The popular Putin is constitutionally barred from running for a third straight term, and analysts say those around him want to ensure they remain in power.

“There was only one extremist on the streets of Moscow on April 14 and that was the government and its law enforcement officers,” Kasparov told reporters outside the prosecutor’s office where he met with investigators.

Interior Ministry spokesman Valery Gribakin said today the actions of law enforcement authorities were being “thoroughly studied and analysed,” but added the same was true for the protesters and contended that police were provoked.

“We truly regret if any innocent civilians and journalists became victims of provocateurs,” Gribakin told a news conference.

According to the ITAR-Tass news agency, he said police “did everything possible to provide security and acted adequately to the situation that developed.”

Kasparov disputed those claims.

“All the police claims about acts of violence, of violation of some rules of law … are totally false. It is a desperate attempt to cover up the brutality and cruelty of police officers,” he said.

Kasparov said prosecutors had summoned him to discuss his detention in connection with a demand by liberal MP Vladimir Ryzhkov for a probe into whether police had acted illegally.

He said the resulting report “will be a very important sign of the current legal and political situation in Russia,” adding that “we have to wait and see whether the prosecutors will take the side of the Russian people versus the law enforcement officers”.

Kremlin critics say Russian prosecutors and courts are tools that serve the state rather than citizens.

After four hours of questioning from investigators with Russia’s main security agency yesterday, Kasparov suggested law enforcement authorities were being pressed by the Kremlin to find evidence of extremism in his actions and words. He said the investigators asked him about statements he made to a radio station and articles in a newspaper published by his group, the United Civil Front, ahead of last weekend’s protests.

Kasparov has sought to help weld disparate political groups into a united opposition to Putin, who critics say has backtracked on democracy and moved to silence dissent.

In comments published today, another opposition leader involved in the Dissenters’ Marches, Putin's former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, accused the government of demolishing all aspects of a democratic state over the past two years.