Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Activists were detained before they were able to deliver their petition

Five gay rights activists have been detained in Moscow as they tried to deliver a petition to the office of Russia's prosecutor general.

Police said they were held because their action was unauthorised.

The activists said more than two million people had signed the petition to investigate alleged torture and detentions of gay people in the Russian region of Chechnya.

Chechen officials have denied that gay people even exist in the republic.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin backed an inquiry into the reported crackdown on gay people in Chechnya, in the North Caucasus.

Earlier this month German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged the Russian authorities to help protect gay rights.

Image caption Activists wanted to deliver empty boxes to the prosecutor general's office

On Thursday, four Russians and an Italian national were held as they tried to deliver a printout of the petition to the prosecutor general's office.

They also carried huge empty boxes, symbolising online signatures they had collected in protest against the alleged crackdown, a BBC Russian reporter says.

The petition was signed "by more than two million people around the world, more than the entire population of the Chechen republic," the Russian LGBT Network said.

It said they were demanding "an unbiased investigation of illegal detentions of hundreds of people in Chechnya because of their homosexuality".

Chechnya's strongman leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, said last week he was ready to co-operate with Russia's federal authorities on the issue.

But Mr Kadyrov repeated recent assertions that there were no "people of non-traditional orientation" (a term sometimes used to describe LGBT people in Russia) in the predominantly Muslim republic.

Chechen officials also say the local police have not received any official complaints from alleged victims.

'It's the extermination of gay men'

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption 'Ruslan', a gay man who says he fled: "It's the extermination of gay men"

Just a few weeks ago, "Ruslan" was with his wife and children in Chechnya. Now he's in a safe house for men fleeing detention and torture for being gay.

Reports of a campaign against gay men by Chechen security forces have been trickling through since early April when they first appeared in a Russian newspaper. Now some of the alleged victims are starting to speak out.

"When they brought me in, I denied everything," says Ruslan - not his real name. Even now, he is frightened of being identified.

Read more of his story

Homophobia is widespread in Chechnya. Last month, Natalia Poplevskaya of the Russian LGBT Network said there was "an organised campaign to detain gay men" in Chechnya.

Image copyright EPA Image caption Gay rights protests in Russia, like this one on 1 May in St Petersburg, are often harshly dealt with by police

Victims of the crackdown - who were either gay or just perceived to be gay - were being held at a detention centre near Argun, 20km (13 miles) from the city of Grozny, she said.

"Torture is going on with electric shocks, beatings with cables," she told the BBC, adding that three deaths had been reported. "All the people arrested are homosexual men or perceived as being gay."

A Chechen government spokesman, Alvi Karimov, denied the allegations. "You can't detain and repress people who simply don't exist in the republic," he said.

Homosexuality was decriminalised in the Russian Federation in 1993 but concern about homophobia remains high.

In 2013, parliament passed a law imposing heavy fines for providing information about homosexuality to people under 18, sparking international controversy.</s>Russian authorities have detained several activists in Moscow as they prepared to deliver a petition calling on authorities to investigate reports alleging a campaign of abuse targeting gay men in the southern region of Chechnya.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activist Igor Yasin said five activists were detained on May 11 as they were on their way to collect printouts of the petition, which they planned to bring to the Prosecutor-General's Office.

OVD-Info, a Russian site that tracks arrests and other police actions, cited activist Irina Yatsenko as saying that one of the detained activists was an Italian citizen.

Police said the group was held because its action was unauthorized.

The detentions come amid mounting international pressure over the alleged detention, torture, and killing of gay men in Chechnya, first reported on April 1 by the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

The Russian LGBT Network says more than 2 million people signed the petition demanding "an unbiased investigation" into the reported abuses.

Amid an international outcry, President Vladimir Putin said on May 5 that he would speak to senior Russian law-enforcement officials about the matter, but suggested the accounts of abuse might just be "rumors."

Based on reporting by OVD-Info, AP, and the BBC</s>Five people have been arrested while delivering a petition calling for an investigation into the reported abuse of LGBT people in Russia's southern Chechen republic.

The group, who planned to hand in the petition at the Prosecutor General's Office in Moscow, had collected more than two million signatures from online activism platforms such as Change.org, All Out and Avaaz.

Nikita Safronov, a member of activist organization Open Russia, said that police arrested the group for holding “an unapproved demonstration.”

He told Russia's RBC news outlet that police officers arrived shortly after the activists left the city's Triumfalnaya Square.</s>Milan, May 12 - Italian LGBT rights activist Yuri Guaiana on Friday told a press conference in Milan that Russian authorities have seized boxes with a reported two million signatures calling on Russian authorities to investigate the alleged detention and torture of gay people in Chechnya. "We were told that the procedure will not go forward", said the activist, who was released on Thursday after being detained while on his way to deliver the petition to the prosecutor general's office in Moscow. He announced that the signatures "will be sent anyway in digital format". Guaiana was among five activists detained as they prepared to submit the signatures against arbitrary detentions and torture of gay people in the Muslim-majority region. The activist also said the trial against the other LGBT activists arrested Thursday is scheduled to start on May 29. "The trial against the Russian activists has been scheduled on May 29". "I will be able to stand trial in absentia but they won't", said Guaiana. He added that activists were hoping to submit the petition before the start of the trial. Independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta first reported the anti-gay abuse last month, saying that some 100 suspected gay men were detained and tortured, and at least three were killed. Guaiana told the press conference that human rights organizations have found evidence that "at least 100 homosexuals" are currently jailed in six prisons.</s>Rome, May 11 - Yuri Guaiana, an Italian activist for the 'Certi Diritti' LGBT rights association, was freed Thursday after being detained in Moscow while on his way to deliver a petition to prosecutors in the Russian capital over the treatment of gays in Chechnya, Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Benedetto Della Vedova tweeted. Guaiana told ANSA after his release that "I have just been released, now I'm rushing to the hotel in a car laid on by the consulate, I'll pack and I'll try to leave the country as soon as possible, which is fundamental, because there is a trial against me". He said he had been charged with staging an unauthorised demonstration and resisting, "something which is absolutely untrue". Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano congratulated the Italian embassy in Moscow on an "excellent" job in securing Guaiana's release. Earlier Della Vedova said the Italian consul had visited Guaiana, who was "well". Earlier Guaiana told ANSA over the phone that "they told us we are in administrative detention, we don't know what's going to happen now but for now they are treating us well and there has been no violence". He said he and four Russian activists were arrested near Moscow's prosecutor general's office while trying to deliver the signatures for a petition against the allegedly harsh treatment of gays in Chechnya. Earlier he told Italian radio that "they put us all with just one policeman to guard us, before there were two. They come in all the time to ask us questions and request documents, espeically my visa. We don't know what will happen now". Guaiana said he had not eaten or drunk anything and thanked Della Vedova for stepping in, as well as the consul who met him. "They are working to free us all," he said. Justice Minister Andrea Orlando said "today's news arouses concern" while European Parliament LGBT group co-chair Daniele Viotti said "the silence of the government and (Foreign Minister Angelino) Alfano on the gay issue in Chechnya is deafening". Viotti called on the government to "bring home Yuri Guaiana".</s>Five LGBT activists have been arrested in Moscow as they tried to deliver a petition calling on Russian authorities to investigate the alleged detention and torture of dozens of gay men in Chechnya.

One of the activists from the group LGBT Network, Nikita Safranov, speaking to ABC News from inside the police station where he and the four others were being detained, said they were arrested today while walking toward the offices of Russia’s Prosecutor General in central Moscow.

The group was carrying large stacks of boxes stamped with the words “Justice for the Chechen 100” and filled with copies of the petition. Safranov said they expected to be charged with staging an unsanctioned demonstration.

The group's petition, which was launched on Change.org, calls for Russia’s prosecutor to investigate recent reports that over 100 men have been kidnapped and tortured by authorities in Chechnya as part of an alleged organized roundup targeting the gay community there.

Reports of the alleged roundup emerged in early April after the independent investigative newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, published articles detailing accounts of how Chechen security forces were detaining the men and holding them in secret prisons. The newspaper said sources in Chechnya’s security services and the LGBT community described the detentions as a “prophylactic purge” against homosexuals in the southern Russian republic, where homosexuality is widely viewed as bringing shame on a family.

Since then, testimonies have emerged from some of the men detained, detailing brutal tortures. One man, who requested anonymity in an interview with ABC News last month, described how Chechen law enforcement agents had kept him in jail for a week, beating him with plastic rods and torturing him with electric shocks.

Testimony from the man, whom ABC News is identifying as Z., and from other men published in Novaya Gazeta, the Guardian and The New York Times said the agents demanded that those detained name other gay men, forming a chain of terror.

Irina Gordienko, a reporter at Novaya Gazeta, told ABC News that the newspaper believes around 200 men had been detained and that is has proof that at least three men had been killed during the purge.

Z., who spoke on condition of anonymity out of concerns for his safety, told ABC News he was released after the agents could find no proof he was gay. But he then fled Chechnya when a mutual acquaintance was detained, fearing authorities would return for him again.

Some of the victims said police had handed them back to their families after the detentions and told them they should kill them themselves to save their honor.

Chechen authorities have denied that the detentions are taking place. A spokesman for the region’s president, Ramzan Kadyrov, has said such persecutions were impossible because Chechnya does not have gay men.

“They were never among us Chechens,” Kadyrov told RIA Novosti. “It can only be those who, not being Chechens, call themselves so in order to get the chance to go the West."

The regional branch of the Prosecutor’s Office in Chechnya has opened an investigation into the reports, but the denunciations from Kadyrov, who personally controls law enforcement in the region, has cast doubt that it will find anything.

The Kremlin has also been reluctant to respond to the reports. President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, initially told reporters that anyone suffering abuses should report them to law enforcement.

Putin himself commented publicly for the first time on the reports last week, saying he would ask federal law enforcement to investigate.

The alleged detentions have prompted condemnation from around the world. The foreign ministers of Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, France and Sweden sent a joint letter last week calling on Russia to investigate.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley issued a statement in April saying the abuses “cannot be ignored.” The State Department said it was “deeply disturbed” by the reports.

LGBT Network has been helping gay men to leave Chechnya. To date, the organization told ABC News, it has helped 42 people escape.

Some of these have been provided with safe-houses in Russia but the organization is trying to get the men asylum abroad in Europe or the United States.

Igor Kochetkov, the group's director, said three European countries were examining the possibility of offering asylum but so far no offers had been made.</s>Five people held as they try to deliver petition protesting against alleged abuses of gay men in Chechnya.

Five activists were detained in Moscow on Thursday while trying to submit a petition calling Russian authorities to investigate the alleged torture and arbitrary detentions of gay people in Chechnya.

The five were planning to bring about two million signatures at the Prosecutor General's Office when they were held by police along the Russian capital's Tverskaya Street, according to LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) activists.

Police said the activists were detained because their action amounted to an unsanctioned protest.

The New York-based civic group Avaaz, which helped collect the signatures worldwide, said in a statement that one of the people held is Italian.

Avaaz's campaign director, Bert Wander, described the detentions as a "blatant attempt by Russia to intimidate those standing up for gay people [which] will only draw more global attention to the horrors unfolding in Chechnya".

The alleged abuse was first reported in April by the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which said about 100 suspected gay men were rounded up and tortured, and at least three were killed.

The Associated Press news agency separately interviewed two Chechen men who spoke of torture and corroborated the reports.

Chechnya's leader Ramzan Kadyrov has fiercely denied Novaya Gazeta's report and claims of a crackdown in the region.

Kadyrov responded to Putin's comments last week by telling journalists his authorities were "ready to closely cooperate" with Moskalkova, RIA Novosti news agency reported.

But he also said that Chechnya does not have any gay people and suggested some gay people may be pretending to be Chechen to get asylum in the West.

Russian President Vladimir Putin last week assured the country's human rights ombudswoman that he would speak with law enforcement officials about the alleged torture of gay men.

Tatyana Moskalkova, the ombudswoman, has asked for a taskforce to be formed to investigate the treatment of LGBT people in Chechnya.</s>Russian police have just detained five activists attempting to deliver 400,000 signatures collected on Change.org and hundreds of thousands collected by Avaaz and AllOut, to the Prosecutor General Office in Moscow.



The petition demands immediate and full investigation into the murder and torture of gay men in Chechnya. The delivery was scheduled at 11am Moscow time, and was organised by Russian LGBT Network along with Avaaz and AllOut. “When stepped out of the car, we immediately saw a lot of police ready there already. Looks like they waited for us and knew we were planning this action,” said Nikita Safronov, one of the petition starters. "So, unfortunately, as we barely left the car with all the boxes, we got immediately detained by the police."



At the moment activists are locked in a police van, from which they were able to text the following message and a photo to Dazed and their petition supporters.



“We are writing this update for you from a police van in which we are being kept. They are planning on taking us to the Tverskoy police station. We are asking you to spread the information about our arrest as wide as you can! Please, use your social networks or communicate this info to journalists you know”.</s>Five gay rights activists have been detained in Moscow as they tried to deliver a petition to the office of Russia’s prosecutor general.

Police said they were held because their action was unauthorised.

The activists said more than two million people had signed the petition to investigate alleged torture and detentions of gay people in the Russian region of Chechnya.

Chechen officials have denied that gay people even exist in the republic.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin backed an inquiry into the reported crackdown on gay people in Chechnya, in the North Caucasus.

Earlier this month German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged the Russian authorities to help protect gay rights.

On Thursday, four Russians and an Italian national were held as they tried to deliver a printout of the petition to the prosecutor general’s office.

They also carried huge empty boxes, symbolising online signatures they had collected in protest against the alleged crackdown, a BBC Russian reporter says.

The petition was signed “by more than two million people around the world, more than the entire population of the Chechen republic,” the Russian LGBT Network said.

It said they were demanding “an unbiased investigation of illegal detentions of hundreds of people in Chechnya because of their homosexuality”.

Chechnya’s strongman leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, said last week he was ready to co-operate with Russia’s federal authorities on the issue.

But Mr Kadyrov repeated recent assertions that there were no “people of non-traditional orientation” (a term sometimes used to describe LGBT people in Russia) in the predominantly Muslim republic.

Chechen officials also say the local police have not received any official complaints from alleged victims.</s>Several activists were detained in Moscow as they prepared to submit signatures they have collected to protest against arbitrary detentions and torture of gay men in Chechnya.

The abuse was first reported in April by the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which said about 100 suspected gay men were rounded up and tortured, and at least three were killed.

The Associated Press separately interviewed two Chechen men who spoke of torture and corroborated the reports.

LGBT activist Igor Yasin said five people were detained in the morning outside the Prosecutor General's Office as they brought about two million signatures collected to protest against the treatment of gay people in Chechnya in Russia's south.

The New York-based civic group Avaaz, which helped collect the signatures worldwide, said in a statement that one of the people detained on Thursday morning is an Italian activist.

Avaaz's campaign director Bert Wander described the detentions as a "blatant attempt by Russia to intimidate those standing up for gay people (which) will only draw more global attention to the horrors unfolding in Chechnya".

Russian activist and journalist Nikita Safronov, left, and his friends inside a police van, after being detained in Moscow today. Pic: Nikita Safronov

President Vladimir Putin last week assured the country's human rights ombudswoman that he would speak with law enforcement officials about the reported torture of gay men.

Tatyana Moskalkova, the ombudswoman, has asked for a taskforce to be formed to investigate the treatment of gays in this predominantly Muslim region.
Moscow police detain five protesters after they attempted to deliver a petition to investigate the status of LGBT rights in Chechnya to the Prosecutor General of Russia.