“I don't understand what they want from me, and for what I am persecuted,” Tedeev said after FSB forced his plane back to Moscow. The former national wrestling coach was going to the Crimea for health treatment.

TBILISI, DFWatch – Russian security police FSB forced a civilian airliner to return to Moscow and confiscated the passport of a South Ossetian ex-politician.

Dzambolat Tedeev, who pondered running for president in South Ossetia last fall, was sitting on an airplane from Moscow to Simferopol on the Crimea in Ukraine, when the plane was forced to return and landed 40 minutes after it had left the airport.

Ossetian media reports Tedeev was going to Simferopol to undergo a course of mud treatment for his health.

Ossetia.kvaisa.ru writes that four men got on board after the plane had landed. They were dressed in civilian clothes. Two of them introduced themselves as officers of FSB, the Russian successor to the Soviet spy agency KGB. They announcing that they were there to carry out an order to remove Tedeev from the plane. They didn’t explain the reason but just said that it was an order from the top.

Tedeev says they took away his passport.

“I don’t understand what they want from me, and for what I am persecuted,” he said.

Tedeev is better known as the coach of Russia’s national wrestling team, but last fall got entangled in the politics of his native region of South Ossetia. After he himself was denied to stand as a candidate, he supported opposition leader Alla Dzhioeva. Suddenly, the wrestling federation fired him without explanation one month ago.

He is now back in his home in Moscow. During his time as a coach he won the Olympic Games, world championships and European championships.