Pussy Riot Member With Young Daughter Denied Parole

[HuffingtonPost]

     

MOSCOW, April 26 (Reuters) - A Russian court refused to  release from prison one of two jailed members of the Pussy Riot  punk band so that she can look after her young daughter.                

The court on Friday rejected Nadezhda Tolokonnikova's appeal  for parole eight months after she was handed a two-year prison   sentence for the band's performance of a "punk prayer" in  Moscow's main Russian Orthodox cathedral.                

Tolokonnikova, 23, has been serving her sentence for  "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" in a prison colony  in central Russia, about 550 km (350 miles) southeast of Moscow.                

"I've spent enough time in the prison colony. I've had  enough of studying it. Half a year is long enough,"  Tolokonnikova, a philosophy student, told the judge at the  parole hearing, the RAPSI legal news agency reported.                

She complained of having frequent headaches in jail in  Mordovia, a region that has a large number of prisons.                

Her lawyer, Irina Khrunova, said Tolokonnikova's  five-year-old daughter Gera needed her mother.                

The judge said Tolokonnikova's parental status had been  taken into account when she was sentenced - prosecutors had  asked for three years - and pointed to two reprimands she has  received as evidence her conduct has not been sufficiently  "corrected", RAPSI reported.                

Tolokonnikova and two other band members, Maria Alyokhina  and Yekaterina Samutsevich, were sentenced last August after a  trial that was widely condemned abroad as part of a clampdown on  dissent by President Vladimir Putin.                

Performers such as Madonna, Sting and former Beatle Paul  McCartney offered their support for Pussy Riot last year.                                

SENTENCES DIVIDED OPINION                

Although the two-year sentences outraged many liberals, many  conservative Russians saw their profanity-laced protest against  Putin's close ties with the Church, performed in short dresses  and brightly coloured tights and balaclavas, as sacrilege.                

Samutsevich, 30, was freed in October when her sentence was  suspended on appeal after she argued that she had been prevented  from taking part in the protest because a guard seized her.                

Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina, 24, lost their appeals and in  January a judge rejected Alyokhina's request for her sentence to  be deferred until her child is older. She has also requested  parole and that appeal could be heard next month.                

The three women said they had not meant to offend Orthodox  Christians with their protest in February 2012, while anti-Putin  protests were drawing tens of thousands of people to the streets  of Moscow and other big cities.                

The rallies have since dwindled and did not stop Putin  winning a presidential election the next month.                

In his annual nationwide question-and-answer session on  Thursday, Putin denied using the courts for political ends.                

But he made clear he did not regret Pussy Riot's sentences,  mentioning them in the same breath as people who desecrate the  graves of World War Two veterans.                

But Samutsevich says Pussy Riot's protest at least succeeded  in drawing attention to what the all-women protest band sees as  Putin's unhealthy relationship with the church and a lack of  political freedoms.                

"We wanted to start a discussion in society, show our  negative view of the merging of the church and state ... The  problem was raised internationally, the problem of human rights  was put sharply into focus," she said in a recent interview.     (Writing by Timothy Heritage; Editing by Steve Gutterman and  Mike Collett-White)

Via: HuffingtonPost