Georgia detains 16 protesters after clashes over disputed election

TBILISI (Reuters) -Police in Georgia detained 16 people in the capital Tbilisi on Tuesday after clashing with protesters opposing the results of last month's parliamentary election, which the opposition and the pro-Western president say were rigged.

Video showed police throwing some protesters to the ground and dragging them along the pavement. Some officers fired pepper spray at close range.

Georgia's Interpress news agency said 16 people had been detained and three had already been released.

Demonstrators in the South Caucasus country have rallied several times since the Oct. 26 election, in which the ruling Georgian Dream party clinched a fourth term in power.

Leaders of three of the four opposition parties that won seats have called for daily protests to prevent the new session of parliament from opening later in November.

Georgian Dream's opponents cast the party as pro-Russian and say its continued rule will torpedo the former Soviet republic's chances of joining the European Union.

A few hundred protesters erected tents and occupied a main avenue in Tbilisi for two nights in a row until they were dispersed on Tuesday morning.

In a statement, the interior ministry said protesters had illegally blocked traffic and urged them to leave the area. It did not mention any arrests.

Coalition for Change, one of the four opposition groups, said several of its members had been arrested and some suffered injuries. A cameraman for Mtavari Arkhi, an opposition television channel, was also detained, the outlet said.

The election commission on Saturday officially confirmed Georgian Dream's victory with 54% of the vote, although two U.S. pollsters commissioned by the opposition have said the result is statistically impossible.

President Salome Zourabichvili, a staunch Georgian Dream critic whose powers are mostly ceremonial, filed a lawsuit in the Constitutional Court against the results, Interpress reported on Tuesday.

Widely seen as pivotal for the country of some 3.7 million people, the election offered a choice between further European integration under the pro-Western opposition, or closer ties with Moscow under a governing party that critics say is increasingly authoritarian.

Observer groups, including the 57-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, have said violations such as ballot-stuffing, voter intimidation and bribery could have swayed the election, but stopped short of saying it was outright stolen. Russia has vigorously denied any interference.

(Reporting by Gleb Stolyarov in Tbilisi and Lucy Papachristou in London; writing by Lucy Papachristou; editing by Jamie Freed and Mark Heinrich)