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A RUSSIAN APPEALS court today ordered the release of one member of punk band Pussy Riot after turning her two-year prison sentence into a suspended term but kept two others in jail with unchanged verdicts.
The judge at the Moscow city court ordered the release of Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, after giving her a two-year suspended prison camp term for performing a protest stunt against President Vladimir Putin in Russia’s main church.
However the two-year prison camp sentences of Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, were upheld by the court.
Judge Larisa Polyakova ruled “to leave Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova’s sentences without changes” while bowing to the appeal filed on behalf of Samutsevich, who was judged not to have taken actual involvement in the “punk prayer” performance.
The judge stressed that Samutsevich could be jailed again if she “violates several restrictions established by law or commits some other crime.”
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I have so much respect for these women. Fair play to them.
Respect ? In fairness they were a bit stupid in the way they protested. They just screwed themselves over.
Bill Clinton was due to get involved until someone explained exactly what ‘pussy riot’ meant :-(
Anyone calling themselves pussy riot deserves jail anyway
Free pussy in Russia (sorry couldn’t resist )
It’s like a bloody hostage negotiation.
Before you go to far defending them they also protested against gay/ lesbian marriage and the influx if immigrants. The more I read about the full extent of there beliefs the less support I have for them. In saying that I still have no love for Russia
Mixed feelings on this one. On the one hand there’s freedom of speech and all that sort of good stuff – then on the other hand there’s a bunch of headline-seeking knob heads. If you kick a wasps nest – expect to get stung.
Why not the hot one?
The Russians – an inspiring people. Pity they killed off all the quality during their still born revolution.
Frightening a gaggle of headscarf-wearing grannies does not make a person the next Martin Luther King. The only successful part of their protest was that the authorities very stupidly overreacted, something that seems to be dawning on them, hence the backpedalling. Russia deserves better activists than these….
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