Kasparov defiant despite jail sentence

A Moscow court sentenced former chess champion Garry Kasparov to five days in jail today for leading an opposition protest.

Mr Kasparov was among dozens of people detained after riot police clashed with Kremlin opponents following a protest rally which drew several thousand demonstrators.

"What you've heard is all lies," Mr Kasparov said after the sentence was read. "The testimony is contradictory. There was not a single word of truth."

Two riot police testified in court that they had been given direct orders before the rally to arrest Mr Kasparov, one of Mr Putin's harshest critics. One of the policemen acknowledged that the two reports he had filed were contradictory.

"This is justice by telephone orders," Mr Kasparov's lawyer, Olga Mikhailova, said.

One of the protesters, Sergei Konstantinov, was beaten in the courthouse and carried out unconscious by four policemen, according to his wife, Yekaterina. He was taken away in a police van, she said.

The protest rally occurred in the midst of an election campaign in which some opposition political groups have been sidelined by new election rules or have complained of being hobbled by official harassment.

After a series of speeches by protest leaders, a group of demonstrators broke past police and marched towards the centre of the city through traffic, chanting and carrying burning red flares.

They were stopped by lines of police with shields, helmets and body armour, who pushed or hauled them into waiting white police buses.

Mr Kasparov was hustled away by a ring of plain clothes and uniformed officers as he spoke to reporters at the site of the march. At one point he was forced to the ground and beaten, his assistant, Marina Litvinovich, said in a telephone interview from outside the police station where he was being held.

Later he was taken to a courtroom, where he was charged with organising an unsanctioned procession "of at least 1,500 people directed against President Vladimir Putin", of chanting anti-government slogans and of resisting arrest.

Police also detained Eduard Limonov, author and leader of the National Bolshevik Party, Mr Kasparov's closest partner in a coalition of anti-Kremlin organisations.

Police in other Russian cities, including Nizhny Novgorod and Samara, detained local opposition protest organisers, according to the Interfax news agency.

Yesterday, the Moscow offices of Mr Kasparov's political organisation were searched by police, who seized campaign materials, and the headquarters of the opposition Union of Right Forces party was hit by vandals, the groups said.

The Kremlin has mounted a major campaign to produce a crushing victory for Mr Putin's United Russia party - perhaps to ensure that Mr Putin can somehow continue to rule Russia even after he steps down as president in May. The constitution prevents him from serving three consecutive terms.

During the rally, Mr Kasparov told the crowd that Mr Putin's Kremlin is using fear to help maintain power and is willing to go to any lengths. "It has no allergy to blood," he said. "But we can win if we are united."

Mr Kasparov's coalition, which includes radicals, democrats and Soviet-era dissidents, has drawn wide media coverage but generated little public support.

Its ranks have expanded somewhat, though, as more mainstream political parties complain that officials have excluded them from the upcoming elections.

Today's rally began on Academician Sakharov Prospect, a boulevard not far from the centre of Moscow, which was ringed by police.

Protesters were surrounded by portable metal fences and funnelled through metal detectors. Men in black coats, who refused to identify themselves, circulated through the crowd shooting video.

After the rally ended, a line of helmeted police tried to prevent a march and channel protesters back toward a nearby Metro station.

But about 150 of the protesters, including young supporters of Mr Limonov, broke free, waving flags and lighting flares, in an attempt to march to the Central Elections Commission, not far from Red Square.

As the demonstrators headed down a narrow street, riot police and plain clothes security agents began grabbing them and shoving them into police buses. Marchers were finally halted when police formed a line across their route.

Separately from the marchers, about 70 other demonstrators managed to get to the Central Election Commission to present a resolution critical of the December 2 parliamentary elections.

Mr Kasparov gave a clenched-fist salute and waved to the media and supporters from the back of a bus as it hauled him away.

"They were extremely rude with us on the street, but in the bus they didn't touch us," Mr Kasparov said on Ekho Moskvy radio, speaking by telephone from the bus. He called the police "aggressive".

Police in Moscow and several other cities have used force to break up several marches in the past year, sometimes beating protesters with truncheons.

The city gave organisers a permit for today's rally but forbade them to march.