Two women from the punk group Pussy Riot serving two-year prison terms for staging a protest performance against President Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow’s main cathedral were released on Monday December 23, 2013 under a new amnesty law.
The case of Maria Alyokhina (above left), who was set free from a prison in the western city of Nizhny Novgorod on Monday morning (December 23, 2013), and her co-defendant, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (above right), who was released later in the day in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, had drawn international condemnation of Russia’s human rights record. Critics said their prosecution and relatively stiff sentences represented a brutal repression of free speech.
Both band members have criticized the release and amnesty as an attempt by Putin to whitewash Russia's poor human rights image ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. MORE HERE, HERE & HERE
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