Russian investigators on Tuesday raided the homes of opposition activists in a new show of force over alleged attempts to overthrow President Vladimir Putin with help from abroad.
Investigators raided the homes of opposition activists Taisiya Alexandrova, Yuri Nabutovsky and Anna Kornilova, confiscating documents as well as computer data, Investigative Committee (SK) spokesman Vladimir Markin said in a statement.
The Investigative Committee, Russia's powerful equivalent of the American FBI, has already launched criminal probes against a string of top activists over the allegations first broadcast in a smear documentary by pro-Kremlin television.
The documentary on NTV called "Anatomy of a Protest-2" said that activists were plotting an anti-Putin uprising with funding from Georgian lawmaker Givi Targamadze.
Nabutovsky with the opposition Solidarity movement told Moscow Echo radio that the investigators had shown up at his home in Moscow at 7:00 am (0300 GMT).
He spoke to the radio station as the raid was being carried out, with a voice in the background heard shouting that he could call a lawyer and then telling him to hang up.
Markin said investigators found that Alexandrova, Nabutovsky and Kornilova had all been part of an opposition group who visited Lithuania in spring this year to take part in a seminar.
The seminar was devoted to "the usurping of power through colour revolutions" like those that ousted post-Soviet regimes in Ukraine and Georgia in recent years, he said.
Markin did not say who had organised the seminar, but added that the financing from Targamadze had now been proven.
One of the anti-Putin movement's most prominent figures, the Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov, has already been charged with seeking to organise mass rioting but has not been arrested.
However, the authorities are holding in detention opposition activist Leonid Razvozzhayev who claims that security forces abducted him in Ukraine and took him back to Russia.
The new raids coincide with the anniversary of the mass opposition protests against Putin's rule that erupted in December last year which were the first big challenge to his hold on power.
Meanwhile, other raids took place in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, 500 kilometres (310 miles) east of Moscow. Activists Yekaterina Zaitseva and Alexander Averin said that they were both targeted.
The Russian opposition is planning a new anti-Putin mass rally on Saturday which will be a crucial test of whether there is still life in the protest movement one year on.
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