Pussy Riot: No Parole For Maria Alyokhina Says Appeal Court

Maria Alyokhina a key member of Art/Punk band Pussy riot will not be granted parole during her two-year prison sentence in Russia. Alyokhina, who has a young son, has served more than a year of her sentence for breaching public order and causing controversy by staging an anti Putin protest, inside a Moscow cathedral. They were convicted for a breach of public order which was motivated by religious hatred, for performing a ‘Punk Prayer’ in the Christ The Saviour Cathedral in February of last year.

Another member of the band remains in prison, while a third had her sentence suspended last year.The artist had appealed to a regional court in Perm, in the Ural Mountains, after a district court denied the request.

Alyokhina’s supporters thought a new appeal would succeed, as she had been moved out of her prison colony in the Urals town of Berezniki to a jail closer to Perm, ahead of the hearing. However, she was not brought to court in the city, more than 1,100km (680 miles) east of Moscow. She addressed the judge via a video link. The jailing of Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich, who was freed in October, caused outrage worldwide.

The Russian authorities have been accused by critics of punishing the women not for the crime but for protests against the policies of Vladimir Putin, in the run-up to his re-election as president.

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