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Pussy Riot could go free Monday

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A member of Pussy Riot in handcuffs

The following story is reprinted from The Moscow Times.

Members of the all-female punk band Pussy Riot may be freed Monday at their scheduled hearing, a lawyer for the women said Sunday.

“I have information from the most reliable source that the girls will be freed,” Pussy Riot lawyer Nikolai Polozov said, Interfax reported. My source said the following: concerning your case, it will be resolved favorably.”

Polozov wrote earlier in Twitter that “Tomorrow after the hearing at the court on Pussy Riot something sensational awaits.”

Polozov clarified that he does not have 100 percent assurance everything will happen according to plan. “But, judging by the fact that the source is very reliable, we have a very good chance,” he said.

Political activist Alina Oraztsova offered similar news on Twitter, saying the band’s lawyers had received a call from the Kremlin indicating the women would be freed.

“Lawyers for Pussy Riot said they received a call from the presidential administration and tomorrow they will free Pussy Riot,” Oraztsova wrote on the micro-blogging site. [ends]

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Are you looking for any heroes right now? Just look at that woman in the photograph above.

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Contact Pussy Riot:
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Pussy Riot’s Live Journal
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Pussy Riot hash tag on Twitter

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UPDATE 10.07.12
No, they’re not going free. The bastards are keeping them locked up.

Russia has ruled hunger-striking punks Pussy Riot must stay in jail ahead of their trial for an anti-Vladimir Putin protest in a church.

Moscow city court rejected an appeal against the three young women’s detention after they went on a hunger strike last Wednesday over a decision to curtail their time to read case materials.

Backers in the courtroom included media magnate Alexander Lebedev, who owns Britain’s The Independent and Evening Standard dailies and co-owns Russia’s liberal thrice-weekly Novaya Gazeta.

He was one of the high-profile figures to back the women by signing letters personally guaranteeing their good conduct. More than a hundred Russian arts figures earlier signed an open letter calling for their release.

“It is an incorrect decision – unjust and unfair,” Mr Lebedev told journalists.

“Unfortunately the judicial system is very much inclined to be part of what they call the vertical of power,” he said referring to the Russia’s Kremlin-ruled top-down system.

The women’s lawyers have predicted that the trial will begin in late July or August.

“I absolutely do not hope for a positive decision in the women’s case,” lawyer Violetta Volkova told journalists.

“They are keeping on with the hunger strike. I am very concerned.”

The decision came after one of the women’s lawyers spread a rumour that they would be freed.

Lawyer Nikolai Polozov had told Interfax news agency on Sunday that he had received a call from “the most reliable source” saying that the women would be released. He also wrote of the call on Twitter.

Court spokeswoman Anna Usachyova told journalists not to believe what she derided as “astrological predictions” on the women’s release.

“I would like to ask you not to overdramatise the hearing of this case. To let the court look at it calmly, not looking round at statements and astrological predictions about the decisions,” she said.

The women members of the band, which performs in brightly coloured balaclavas and dresses, face up to seven years for singing a song critical of the Church’s relations with Putin in Moscow’s central Church of Christ the Saviour. They have been held in pre-trial detention since March.

Russia keeps Pussy Riot locked up

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UPDATE 23.07.12
Now the bastards are keeping them locked up till next year.

Pussy Riot Detention Extended to 2013

A court extended into next year the detention of three women suspected of performing an anti-Putin song in a Moscow church, prompting condemnation from opposition figures and comparisons to the case of jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Just as with Khodorkovsky, some observers placed the blame for the women’s jailing squarely at the feet of President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of being behind the decision to keep the trio locked up.

“President Putin is keeping three young female artists behind bars for their insubordination,” said Marieluise Beck, a member of the German parliament’s foreign relations committee.

“The prolongation of their detention until 2013 … will encourage the president to make these women his personal prisoners,” she said in a statement.

At a closed hearing at the Khomovnichesky District Court, the site of Khodorkovsky’s 2010 trial for embezzlement and tax evasion, Judge Marina Syrova on Friday approved prosecutors’ motion to keep the women in pretrial detention until Jan. 12, 2013, more than nine months after they were arrested.

Their lawyers pledged to appeal the decision.

The women face up to seven years in prison if convicted of hooliganism charges stemming from their alleged participation in a performance of a song called “Mother of God, Cast Putin Out!” by four masked members of feminist punk band Pussy Riot in Christ the Savior Cathedral on Feb. 21.

The performance was strongly condemned by state and church officials, who have called on the women to repent. The suspects have denied the charges.

Prosecutors have argued that the three women — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22; Maria Alyokhina, 24; and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29 — are flight risks and could commit new crimes if let go.

Lawyers for a group of churchgoers and church security guards who witnessed the performance made a more sensational claim Friday, arguing that Pussy Riot’s “rock prayer” had inspired bloody attacks on Muslim leaders in Tatarstan on Thursday and that therefore the women should not be freed, defense lawyer Violetta Volkova said, Gazeta.ru reported.

Another of the women’s lawyers, Mark Feigin, called the ruling illegal and described it as a show of force by the Kremlin in the face of growing calls for the women’s release.

“It’s not a matter of law. It’s not a matter of reason,” he said by telephone after the hearing. “It’s a way of saying, ‘We can do what we want.'”

Feigin speculated that the trial, whose date is expected to be announced at a hearing Monday, would take place next month and that the women would be found guilty and imprisoned.

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