Missing Pussy Riot Inmate Turns Up at a Tuberculosis Hospital
Jailed Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has been located. Contrary to reports yesterday that she’s at a new prison in Siberia, her husband, Peter Verzilov, confirmed to Rolling Stone that she’s at a hospital in the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk. He spoke to the jailed activist on Thursday after doctors at the hospital called him from Krasnoyarsk’s Tuberculosis Hospital No. 1, a large medical facility. Russia’s prison service also formally informed him of his wife’s location.
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“She was in good condition. She said her conditions were OK,” Verzilov said by phone. “She’s not sick right now, she’s just having procedures and tests related to the hunger strike.” Verzilov added that conditions at the hospital were satisfactory. Although the facility does treat tuberculosis, it functions as an ordinary hospital.
The activist had been missing for 24 days, after she was abruptly moved from a camp in Mordovia, where she had been serving her sentence. She told Verzilov that during the time of her disappearance, she had been kept from having conatct with the outside world throughout her three-week transfer across Russia.
“She said conditions and treatment were OK, but that the one thing was she was in very strict isolation,” he said.
It’s not yet clear where the activist will serve the rest of her sentence. Verzilov said that a source in the prison service had told him Tolokonnikova may serve her full-sentence at the hospital in Krasnoyarsk. Her defense team had believed she would be moved to a camp in Nizhny Ignash, 150 miles from Krasnoyarsk, but he said that this was no longer certain.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is currently serving a two-year sentence for “premeditated hooliganism” in conjunction with Pussy Riot performances.
Additional reporting by Mike Ayers