Pussy Riot Member Is Denied New Bid for Parole
Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina has again been denied parole halfway through serving a two-year prison sentence for her role in a 2012 protest against Russian President Vladimir Putin, the BBC reports.
A Russian court in May rejected Alyokhina’s previous bid for parole, and the 25-year-old activist went on a hunger strike after Russian authorities refused to give her permission to attend her parole hearing. She was hospitalized at the end of the first week of her hunger strike, and ended her protest after 11 days.
Pussy Riot: Their Trial in Pictures
Alyokhina, who has a young son, was relocated from a Ural Mountains prison colony to a jail closer to the city of Perm, where the hearing was held. But she was still denied court access, speaking to the judge through a video stream.
Alyokhina’s bandmate Nadezhda Tolokonnikova was denied parole in April, though their fellow Pussy Riot member Yekaterina Samutsevich was freed on appeal last October. The punk artists were sentenced to prison last August for staging a “punk prayer” protest against Putin on the altar of Moscow’s main cathedral in February 2012. The case has drawn attention from musicians around the world, including Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono, who have called for Russian authorities to parole the women.