Tatchell and Right Said Fred star battered by anti-gay thugs in Moscow

Former politician Peter Tatchell and pop singer Richard Fairbrass had travelled to the city to join a protest demanding the right to hold a Gay Pride parade there.

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Mr Fairbrass, 53, the Right Said Fred singer, was being interviewed on TV during the Moscow march when an anti-gay activist, dressed all in black, surged forward and began raining blows on his head and punched him full in the face.

The attack left him with blood dripping from cuts around his eyes and nose.

Mr Tatchell, 55, was repeatedly beaten and kicked before being taken away by two riot policemen.

In an unrelated incident, a senior British diplomat was also beaten up during a midnight walk in a remote Siberian city.

Nigel Gould-Davies, first secretary at the British embassy in Moscow, was attacked while on his way to a nightclub and restaurant complex in Chita, some 3,760 miles east of Moscow, said Russian police.

He was treated in hospital for facial injuries after being attacked by two unidentified men and was able to return to Moscow yesterday.

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As many as 30 other gay rights protesters were also detained at the Moscow march. They included two European parliamentarians trying to present a petition asking Mayor Yuri Luzhkov - who has called gay marches Satanic acts - to lift a ban on the parade.

Nationalists and extreme Russian Orthodox anti-gay protesters held icons and denounced homosexuality as "evil". Others wore surgeon's masks, which they said would protect them from the "gay disease".

Russia decriminalised homosexuality in 1993 but tolerance is not widespread.

"We believe these perverts should not be allowed to march on the streets of Moscow," said Igor Miroshnichenko, who said he was an Orthodox believer who had come to support the riot police. "Homosexuality is Satanic."

Mr Tatchell, once a Labour parliamentary candidate, revealed last September that he received 20 death threats in the street, on the telephone or by e-mail after declaring war on reggae musicians who advocate the killing of homosexuals.

Mr Tatchell, who is also a committed human rights campaigner, also attempted to make a citizen's arrest on Robert Mugabe outside Harrods in 2003.

Every window in his London home has been smashed, and he is said to sleep with a bucket of water next to the bed in case he is firebombed.