Anti-Putin Presidential Candidate Beaten and Arrested

This post, written by Manila Ryce, originally appeared on The Largest Minority

Chess grandmaster and Russian presidential candidate Garry Kasparov was forced to the ground, beaten, and arrested by Moscow riot police yesterday during an anti-Kremlin rally of around 3,000 people. Protesters attempted to deliver a petition to the Central Election Commission building, but were stopped and pushed into three police buses. Kasparov is head of Other Russia, an umbrella coalition of several movements opposed to the authoritarian control of President Vladimir Putin.

Kasparov was taken to a city court, where he was sentenced to five days in jail for organizing an unauthorized protest and resisting arrest. "What you've heard is all lies," 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 were given direct orders before the rally to arrest Kasparov. One of the policemen did acknowledge that the two reports filed were contradictory.

Kasparov has stated his intention to run for the presidency next March, but his party, along with a number of other opposition parties, has been denied registration for the upcoming parliamentary vote. Eduard Limonov, leader of the National Bolshevik Party, was also arrested.

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