Russia's Supreme Court critical of Pussy Riot ruling
Russia's
Supreme Court has criticised the guilty verdicts in the Pussy Riot case and
ordered a review of the ruling that convicted three members of the punk protest
group of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" after the band
staged a provocative performance that criticised the Russian government
in a Moscow cathedral in August 2012 Two of the three, Maria Alyokhina
and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, were jailed. The Supreme Court has now said that
the prosecution in the case failed to demonstrate that the defendants were
motivated by hatred towards a specific social group, which, appeal judges said
last week, is necessary for this ruling. The Supreme Court added that judges in
the lower court should also have considered that Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova
were mothers with young children when sentencing them. The ruling comes
alongside the recently announced amnesty bill' y put forward to the country's
parliament by premier Vladimir Putin, which aims to show leniency on the twentieth
anniversary of the Russian Constitution (and remove embarrassing Russian court rulings
before next year's Winter Olympics in Russia) could also lead to the Pussy Riot
two being freed early although with just three months left to run on both
protestors' sentences, any ruling will have little effect on the two year custodial
sentence’s Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova received.
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