MOSCOW: Opposition leader and chess legend Garry Kasparov was arrested on Saturday after scuffling with riot police during a protest against President Vladimir Putin a week before parliamentary elections.

Kasparov and one of his bodyguards were grabbed by riot police and forced into a police bus which then drove them away from the scene where hundreds of opposition activists were in a tense standoff with security forces.

“Freedom! Freedom!” supporters shouted as the bus drove off in central Moscow, journalists said.

The arrest came during a march in central Moscow by members of The Other Russia coalition led by Kasparov and which brings together radical leftwingers, moderates and liberal reformers opposed to Putin’s policies.

“We were posing no threat to public order,” Kasparov told journalists after interior ministry forces surrounded him and his supporters.

Kasparov was arrested after around 2,000 anti-Putin demonstrators held a rally, after which a few hundred marched toward the Central Election Commission office to deliver a petition denouncing the Dec 2 parliamentary vote.

Putin’s United Russia party is set to win a strong majority in the vote held just three months before presidential elections that are to elect a successor to the Kremlin leader. Police said a total of 13 people were arrested following the demonstration.

Kasparov was also arrested last April after an opposition march in central Moscow was violently dispersed by riot police.—AFP