Alright, everyone. It’s Hyperlink time. So, Pussy Riot’s appeal against the two-year prison sentence they got slammed with following a guerrilla protest against president Vladimir “Fascism kinda works?” Putin in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral was, well, 33.333333% successful. As the BBC reports, the court that heard their case has freed one of the three convicted women.
Yekaterina Samutsevich, age 30, got her two-year jail term suspended today, on the grounds that she had been “thrown out of the cathedral by guards before she could remove her guitar from its case for the band’s ‘punk prayer’ back in February.” As for the other two members of the band — Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22 — they are still on the hook for the remainder of their sentences in a Russian prison colony. In their final statements to the court, Alyokhina warned that they “won’t stay silent” no matter where they are sent to prison, and Tolokonnikova urged the court to “quash this sentence” on the grounds that it’s “as clear as daylight that this was a political act, not anti-religious…” “We’re all innocent,” Alyokhina also told the court earlier in the hearing. “The verdict should be overturned. The Russian justice system looks discredited.” Yeah, kinda?
“We’re glad that Yekaterina Samutsevich has been freed, but we think the other two girls should also be released,” said defense lawyer Mark Feigin following the results of this latest less-than-satisfying plot point in the Pussy Riot saga. He then vowed that the appeal process would continue. Sigh. Buckle up, kids. Looks like there’ll be at least a few more non-jokey news stories from TMT.
• Free Pussy Riot: http://freepussyriot.org
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