This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Artist News Legal
Jailed Pussy Riot member declines early release hearing as bandmate is moved to another prison
By Aly Barchi | Published on Monday 21 October 2013
Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina has withdrawn a plea to be released from her prison sentence early, citing solidarity with the Russian punk collective’s other remaining detainee Nadezhda Tolokonnikova.
As previously reported, Tolokonnikova was admitted to hospital last month, having embarked on a hunger strike protest against the “slave like” conditions in the penal colony in Mordova, Russia, win whichshe’s serving her two year sentence. Having since renewed the strike, it’s been decided that she will be transferred to a different facility, something her husband Pyotr Verzilov has described as “a great victory”.
Meanwhile, according to Reuters, Alyokhina, who last week refused to take part in a court hearing debating her potential early release, issued this explanation (seemingly prior to hearing the news about Tolokonnikova): “I do not have any moral right to take part in this court hearing at a time when my friend and fellow convict Nadezhda Tolokonnikova does not have such opportunity. She is currently in hospital or back in that same prison which we have heard horrible things about”.
Both Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova are due to be freed in March 2014.
