Moscow police call in Kasparov over protest ‘bite’

Former chess king turned Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov faced the threat of prison yesterday after being questioned over claims that he bit a policeman at the sentencing of the Pussy Riot punk rockers.

The bizarre but serious charge could put the fast-talking 49-year-old behind bars for five years and deliver even graver harm to Moscow’s deteriorating relations with the West in President Vladimir Putin’s third term.

Mr Kasparov has been a seminal figure of the Russian opposition who used his fame to publish articles in the Western press detailing the difficulties human rights encountered during Mr Putin’s last 12 years in power.

His impact on home politics has been limited almost entirely to failed efforts to merge the various forces of Russia’s protest movement into a cohesive unit that could meaningfully take on Mr Putin at the polls.

But he remains a constant presence at Moscow protests and was one of dozens detained in confrontations that broke out during Friday’s sentencing to two years in prison for the three feminist protest band members.

Mr Kasparov had defended their “punk prayer” stunt performance as “political speech that should be unconditionally protected” – a view unanimously shared by Western powers but not the Kremlin nor Russia’s powerful Orthodox Church.

No charges against Mr Kasparov have yet been filed and he only appeared yesterday at a Moscow district police station to give initial testimony. The Moscow police department said it had handed over the evidence to the federal Investigative Committee that leads almost all high-profile cases against Russian opposition members.

But the charges – if pursued – could deal one of the biggest blows yet to ties that are already strained from opposing views of the Syria conflict and what is believed to be Mr Putin’s decision to brook no dissent in his third term.

Kasparov dismissed the biting allegations with characteristically bitter irony on his Twitter account.

“I am sorry if the policeman who was beating me on the head had hurt his hand,” the man widely regarded as history’s greatest chess player tweeted.