Pussy Riot Artist Moved To Isolation Cell For Protection

Maria Alyokhina, one of the two remaining members of the Art/Punk band Pussy Riot  has been put into solitary confinement because of tensions with the other inmates. She was transferred to a cell in the Berezniki penal colony, east of Moscow, after sentencing in August.
The conditions surrounding Nadezhda Tolokonnikova the other jailed artist is not widely reported or known.

Tolokonnikova’s husband Petr Verzilov told the media that Alyokhina’s lawyer said; the prison authorities had suggested the transfer and Alyokhina had agreed. Conditions at both prisons are described as draconian.The jail cell is located in the “punishment block” of the prison,however Alyokhina was not being kept in “the punishment mode”, Verzilov added.

On Friday, Vladimir Putin responded angrily to German chancellor Angela Merkel’s question of why the jail sentence passed for the anti-Kremlin band was so severe. She added the band’s performance in a Moscow cathedral, would have “generated a debate about whether that should go on in a church, no question” but argued the sentences they received.

The pair were jailed for two years in August for performing an anti-Kremlin song in Moscow’s main cathedral, Christ the Saviour, on 21 February. They were convicted of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” over the anti-Putin “punk prayer”. The judge stated that the women had “crudely undermined social order” and shown a “complete lack of respect”,during their action in February. The Members of the band have always professed that their “punk prayer” was a political act in protest, against Church leader’s support of President Vladimir Putin, not an act against the Church itself. Conditions are reported to be tough and draconian at the work camps located in Perm and Mordovia, east of Moscow. Those areas were traditionally used for mass prison colonies in the Soviet era.

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