In a letter to Russian authorities this week, former Beatle Paul McCartney asked them to release the remaining members of Pussy Riot from prison. McCartney’s missive comes as the punk band’s Maria Alyokhina began a hunger strike after she was not allowed to attend her own parole hearing.
Maria Alyokhina, a member of the Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot jailed for performing an anti-Putin “punk prayer” in Moscow’s main cathedral this year, has been transferred to a solitary cell at Berezniki penal colony, apparently at her own request.
“If this political system throws itself against three girls ... it shows this political system is afraid of truth,” a member of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot said as a judge set a verdict date on charges that the musicians engaged in hooliganism against the Russian government.
A Moscow judge on Friday ordered three members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot to remain in jail awaiting trial for an anti-Putin performance in Moscow’s major church, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, in February.