Several members of the Russian liberal opposition party Yabloko were detained on Wednesday after attempting to stage a protest in front of the Central Election Commission building in central Moscow, police said.
"At 10:45 Moscow time police stopped an unsanctioned protest in central Moscow. Several people were detained and taken to a nearby police station for further questioning," the police said in a statement.
A Yabloko spokesman said four activists were detained, as was party leader Sergei Mitrokhin when he arrived at the police station after the incident to check on the status of the detainees.
The Yabloko members gathered in front of the CEC building in downtown Moscow's Kitai-Gorod neighborhood to protest at the party being excluded from regional parliamentary elections in the Kaluga and Sverdlovsk regions.
Election officials rejected 56% of the signatures on the party's registration for the Sverdlovsk elections, barring Yabloko from the ballot.
The acticvists waved placards saying "Stop leaving us out of elections!" and shouted "Churov, shave your beard off!" in reference to an earlier promise by CEC chairman Vladimir Churov to remove his beard if any election in Russia fell short of democratic standards.
The election commission secretary, Nikolai Konkin, said he was not able to comment on the incident as "nobody saw it."
MOSCOW, March 3 (RIA Novosti)
