An anti-Kremlin activist is being held in a mental hospital in what supporters say is a return to a Soviet-era punishment of dissidents.

Roman Nikolaichik, a parliamentary candidate for The Other Russia, the chess champion Garry Kasparov's anti-Putin coalition, was sent to a psychiatric hospital after police questioned him about his political activities.

Mr Nikolaichik, 27, a lawyer, was detained in Tver, 100 miles (160km) north of Moscow, where he is head of the coalition's local branch. He is also a member of Ares, a monarchist movement in Russia.

Yevgeny Svetovidov, a spokesman for Ares, said that Mr Nikolaichik was a victim of “punitive psychiatry” after being summoned for questioning by local prosecutors on Friday. He said that they tried initially to fabricate a charge of attempted murder against the activist, then called a doctor who certified him as mentally unstable.

“Seeing the obvious absurdity of the fabricated accusation, and anticipating that the case would simply fall apart, the security services decided to employ punitive psychiatry in relation to Nikolaichik, and he was sent for detention to a psychiatric clinic,” Mr Svetovidov said. “The current process has an obviously political nature, with Nikolaichik's political position and his involvement with The Other Russia coalition serving as its cause.”

Mr Nikolaichik, who has a wife and three children, is being held in an isolation ward at the Litvinov pyschiatric hospital in Busharevo, a town in Tver region. Friends and family have been unable to contact him.

He was a prominent member of protest rallies, known as Dissenters' Marches, called by The Other Russia last year. Mr Svetovidov said that Mr Nikolaichik had come under repeated pressure from the security services to leave the group.

The case carries echoes of the treatment of Larissa Arap, an activist for The Other Russia, who was forcibly detained in a pyschiatric hospital for 46 days in the summer. Ms Arap, a journalist, said that she was heavily drugged and threatened after writing an article that exposed abuse of children at the same unit where she was detained in Murmansk, northern Russia.

When she was freed after a public outcry by human rights campaigners, doctors warned her that she would be locked up indefinitely if she talked about her treatment. She was released only after the Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB, contacted the hospital's chief doctor.

Ms Arap, 49, was arrested after a check-up to obtain a driver's licence. Her case outraged the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia, which gave warning of a return to the practice, common during Soviet times, of locking up people who were critical of the authorities.

Punitive psychiatry was used widely by the Soviet Union to silence dissidents by labelling them mentally ill.

* A petition signed by 160 Russian professionals has been sent to President Putin in protest at the campaign to force the British Council to close its regional offices in St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg (Tony Halpin writes).

The signatories to the petition, including bankers, business people and journalists who have all studied in Britain, urged Mr Putin to reverse the decision, saying that it had damaged the image of Russia. Britain initially defied the order to close its offices but was forced to comply after harassment by the Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB.

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