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Russian prison service move jailed Pussy Riot member, location currently unknown
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 4 November 2013
The Russian prison service has confirmed that jailed Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has been moved to a new penal colony, adding that her family will be informed of her whereabouts within ten days of her arrival at the new prison.
The statement, issued via the Interfax news agency, followed comments made to Buzzfeed by Tolokonnikova’s husband Pyotr Verzilov, who told the website that he’d not know where the authorities were keeping his wife since 21 Oct, when she was put on a train destined for another unknown prison facility. She was then spotted three days later by another passenger as that train arrived in the city of Chelyabinsk, in the Ural mountains.
As previously reported, since being jailed last year for her involvement in the controversial Pussy Riot protest performance in a Moscow church, Tolokonnikova hit out at the conditions at the prison where she was incarcerated, and twice went on hunger strike in protest. Supporters of Tolokonnikov and her group have also protested outside the prison where she was being held.
And Verzilov thinks that it was those protests that motivated the authorities to move his wife to a new location. He told Buzzfeed: “They want to cut her off. This is basically the only way they have to punish Nadya – ‘let’s cut her off from the outside world'”.
Meanwhile Tolokonnikov’s father raised concerns for his daughter’s safety, especially given the two hunger strikes had left her weak. Andrei Tolokonnikov said: “No one knows anything. There’s no proof she’s alive, we don’t know the state of her health. Is she sick? Has she been beaten?”
Under the Russian prison system’s own rules, Tolokonnikov’s family should learn of her current location anytime now.