Pussy Riot members released from Russian prisons
Print Edition
Two jailed members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot were released yesterday following an amnesty law.
Maria Alekhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were granted amnesty last week.
The third member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was released on a suspended sentence months after all three were found guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred and sentenced to two years in prison for the performance at Moscow’s main cathedral in March 2012.
The band members said their protest was meant to raise concern about increasingly close ties between the state and the church.
Russian parliament passed the amnesty bill last week, allowing the release of thousands of inmates. Alekhina and Tolokonnikova, who were due for release in March, qualified for amnesty because they have young children.
Tolokonnikova walked out of a prison gate in the eastern Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk yesterday, smiling to reporters and flashing a V sign.
“How do you like our Siberian weather here?” said Tolokonnikova, wearing a down jacket but no hat or scarf in minus 25 degrees Celsius.
Tolokonnikova said she and Alekhina will set up a human rights group to help prisoners.
Alekhina, who was released earlier yesterday from a prison outside the Volga river city of Nizhny Novgorod, said she would have stayed behind bars to serve her term if she was free to turn it down.
“If I had a chance to turn it down, I would have done it,” she told Dozhd TV. “This is not an amnesty. This is a hoax and a PR move.”
She said the amnesty bill covers less than 10 percent of the prison population and only a fraction of women with children behind bars. Women convicted of grave crimes, even if they have children, are not eligible for amnesty.
Alkhina said prison officials did not give her a chance to say goodbye to cell mates, but put her in a car and drove her to the train station in downtown Nizhny Novgorod.
The release of the two Pussy Riot band members came days after President Vladimir Putin pardoned Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oil tycoon and once Russia’s richest man. Khodorkovsky flew to Germany after release and said he will stay out of politics. He pledged to fight for the release of political prisoners in Russia.
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