Moscow police denied they had detained a six-year-old boy on Tuesday during an opposition rally, a police spokesman said.
On Tuesday a group of opposition activists held their weekly rally, “Elections Without Opposition Is a Crime,” on Triumfalnaya Square, a frequent site for opposition gatherings. The police officers spotted the boy accompanied by a young girl and took both into custody.
“It turned out that the girl the six-year old boy was accompanying was on a missing persons list. She has no relation to the boy,” the spokesperson said, adding that the boy’s mother soon arrived to take home her child.
The boy, Ivan, told the police officers that his father, Sergei Aksyonov, took him to the Triumfalnaya Square each Tuesday where “over 50 people shout and hold banners with inscriptions.”
“My father was shouting along with these people, they were speaking loudly and handed out papers that read something about the truth, I don’t know what exactly,” Aksyonov read in his blog, citing the police record of his son’s questioning.
The girl was a family friend. She was sent to a children’s hospital after her parents refused to pick her up themselves.