Pussy Riot Could Be Out Of Prison Tomorrow
An amnesty passed by Russia’s parliament Wednesday is expected to free 2,000 prisoners, including group members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/pussy-riot-could-be-out-of-prison-tomorrow
KIEV, Ukraine — Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova could be free from prison within hours after Russia’s parliament unanimously passed a sweeping amnesty bill Wednesday.
The bill was introduced by Russian President Vladimir Putin to mark the 20th anniversary of the country’s constitution, which was December 12. It is widely viewed as an attempt to sanitize the country’s human rights record ahead of the Sochi Olympics in February. Other high-profile prisoners, including the “Arctic 30” Greenpeace activists arrested in September for scaling an oil rig to protest drilling, are also covered under the amnesty.
Lawmakers say it will free as many as 25,000 people when it becomes law after its publication in Russia’s official government newspaper, expected on Thursday, although rights activists claim that all but about 2,000 of those covered by the amnesty are not currently serving time. The amnesty mostly covers pensioners, juvenile offenders, women with small children, and first-time offenders convicted of various misdemeanors, including hooliganism, which the Pussy Riot members were convicted of in August 2012. Last-minute amendments added those currently standing trial for hooliganism to the amnesty, which would include the Greenpeace activists, who saw initial charges of piracy downgraded when they were bailed in November.
It remains unclear when the prisoners covered under the bill will be freed, since it allows a six-month window for its implementation. Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova’s sentence runs out in March, but Pavel Chikov, the head of the AGORA legal foundation that represents them, told BuzzFeed that they could be released Thursday and “almost 100 percent” before the end of the week, depending on bureaucratic procedures.