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Artist News Legal
Russian ‘amnesty bill’ could free Pussy Riot two
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 10 December 2013
A Russian newspaper has said that a bit of legislation submitted to the country’s parliament by President Vladimir Putin could lead to the two Pussy Riot members jailed for staging a protest performance in a Moscow church being freed. The third Pussy Riot performer who received a suspended sentence for her role in the protest could also be pardoned.
It’s not entirely clear how the proposed amnesty law would work, and legal reps for Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina say that while they could “theoretically” benefit from the legislation, what happens in parliament will ultimately impact on whether or not it applies to their cases.
The amnesty bill looks to free prisoners who have been jailed for certain non-violent crimes, and could favour women with dependent children, such as Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina. Putin-supporting newspaper Izvestia also reckons that Greenpeace activists arrested in Russia after protesting about Russian oil drilling in the Arctic could also benefit.
Quite how quickly the amnesty law would kick into action isn’t clear, with the Pussy Riot two in the latter part of their prison terms now anyway.
Though given cynics reckon that the law, while officially designed to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Russian Constitution, is partly designed to put to bed various international controversies that have occurred over the actions of the Russian authorities before next February’s Russian Winter Olympics, Putin’s proposals could lead to some pretty speedy results.
