Updated

Several activists have been detained in Moscow as they prepared to submit signatures they have collected to protest arbitrary detentions and torture of gay men in Chechnya.

LGBT activist Igor Yasin said five people were detained Thursday morning outside the Prosecutor General's Office as they brought about 2 million signatures collected to protest the treatment of gay people in Chechnya in Russia's south.

The abuse was first reported in April by the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which said about 100 suspected gay men were rounded up and tortured, and at least three were killed. The Associated Press separately interviewed two Chechen men who spoke of torture and corroborated the reports.