Two members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot have been arrested in the town of Sochi, activists say.
Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were detained on Tuesday, according to reports on Twitter.
Tolokonnikova tweeted that they had been planning to perform a song in Sochi called Putin Will Teach You to Love the Motherland.
It was “dedicated to prisoners of the swamp [slang for the coastal area around the Olympics], corrupt Olympics, ecologist Vitishko and supressed freedoms in Russia”.
However, she said that before they could perform she was “detained near the seaport of Sochi on suspicion of felony”.
She said police had accused her of theft. She also claimed that police “used force during the arrest” and had denied her a lawyer.
The two were released from jail in December after serving 21 months of a two-year term for performing a "punk prayer" against President Vladimir Putin in Moscow’s main cathedral.
They have since begun campaigning for better jail conditions in Russia.
However, there are doubts that the pair are still officially members of the band.
On February 6 an open letter posted on the band’s official website, apparently from their current membership, said it was “no secret” that the pair were “no longer members of the group and will no longer take part in radical activism”.
However, there were no hard feelings, the letter saying “the world has acquired two brave human rights defenders.”
The split followed their appearance at an Amnesty International event in New York.
At a subsequent news conference in Berlin Tolokonnikova and Alyokina insisted they were still members of the band and were “still in contact with … the people we performed with” at the infamous performance in a Moscow cathedral.
They were reportedly planning to run for office in Moscow’s local government.
There have been several arrests in recent days related to protests in and around the winter Olympics.
An Italian former MP claims she was arrested at the Olympic site on Sunday while queuing to buy a ticket and brandishing a banner saying “it’s OK to be gay”. She was later released, and the IOC said she was never officially under arrest.
And on Monday, police detained an activist in central Sochi, who was holding a solo protest against a three-year prison sentence given last week to environmental activist Yevgeny Vitishko. He was sentenced to 30 hours community service for an illegal protest.
Amnesty International’s Netherlands director, who was in Sochi for a conference on sport and human rights, said the crackdown on dissent in Russia was getting worse, despite the arrival of the Olympics.
However, the IOC have said they do not want the Olympics to be used as a platform for political protests.
