Delegates "detained" at Russia's alternative G8

MOSCOW, July 11 (Reuters) Russian security officials in plain clothes today detained four delegates at an alternative Group of Eight summit run by the opposition and bundled them into cars, conference organisers told Reuters.

Senior US and European diplomats are attending the ''Other Russia'' summit as a show of support for democracy. Critics say President Vladimir Putin -- who hosts world leaders at the G8 summit this weekend -- is rolling back freedoms in Russia.

A spokesman for Moscow police said police officers had not arrested anyone at the conference.

''Four delegates were seized by force in the lobby of the hotel where the conference is being held by people in civilian clothes and put into cars with dark blue licence plates,'' said a spokeswoman for the organisers.

Russian police vehicles have blue licence plates. ''We think this is a flagrant insult to the conference and to civil society in Russia,'' she said.

The spokeswoman said the four were members of the National Bolshevik Party, a radical opposition group that specialises in civil disobedience. She said they were registered as delegates at the two-day conference.

Russian authorities say National Bolsheviks are dangerous extremists. Dozens of the party's activists have been arrested over the past few years.

Party activists have hung banners from buildings in central Moscow and staged sit-ins inside government office buildings. Leader Eduard Limonov, a cult novelist, has served time in prison for firearms offences. He said the case was political.

REUTERS SY BD2315