A Moscow appeals court has released one of the jailed members of anti-Kremlin punk band Pussy Riot, but ordered two others to serve the remainder of their two-year jail term in a Russian prison colony.
Yekaterina Samutsevich, the oldest of the three women at 30, walked free into the arms of her father, after serving six months in a pre-trial detention centre after being found guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred in August.
A panel of three judges accepted the argument of Samutsevich's new lawyer that she had not participated fully in the group's February performance of an anti-Putin "punk prayer" in a Moscow cathedral. Samutsevich had been kicked out of the cathedral shortly after entering, meaning she did not engage in the "aggressive movements" that had offended Russia's Orthodox believers, she argued.
The other two women, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, hugged Samutsevich goodbye. They will now be sent to prison colonies to serve the remainder of their two-year terms.
The women issued final statements in the court, acknowledging that their public roles as harsh anti-Putin critics would be reduced once in jail. "I have lost all hope in the court," Alyokhina said from inside a glass cage. "But I want again and for the last time, because we probably won't get another chance, to talk about our motives. Dear believers, we did not want to offend you."
"We don't have and have never had any religious hate," Tolokonnikova said. The band's performance was political and not religious, she argued.
The case against Pussy Riot has highlighted the crackdown on freedoms inside Russia since Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency in May amid a wave of discontent. They have been held in a Moscow detention centre since their arrest in March.
In a documentary aired on Sunday, Putin said the three jailed members of the anti-Kremlin punk band Pussy Riot "got what they asked for". He claimed on NTV that he had played no role in the case. "I have nothing to do with it," he said. "They got what they asked for."
SEE ALSO: MEMBERS OF PUSSY RIOT SENTENCED TO 2 YEARS IN JAIL >
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