Moscow city court rejected on Monday an appeal for the release from custody of three women from the Pussy Riot punk group who face up to seven years in jail over an anti-Putin protest.
“I believe that neither I, nor my lawyers have the same rights as the prosecution” said suspect Maria Alyokhina ahead of the ruling. “I urge you to examine this criminal case without prejudice. This is my last chance.”
A number of high-profile figures, including media tycoon Alexander Lebedev, pledged in the crowded courtroom to stand guarantor for the suspects if they were released from custody ahead of their trial. But the judge ruled to uphold a lower court’s decision last month to deny the suspects bail on the grounds that they could “flee or exert pressure on the investigation.”
“The girls are already all on the sixth day of a hunger strike and I am very concerned about them,” lawyer Violeta Volkova said during an interval at the hearing. She also reiterated complaints that the suspects’ defense team was not being allowed enough time to examine the case material.
Suspects Alyokhina 24, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29, all looked weary and tired as they appeared one-by-one on a video monitor from their Moscow pre-trial detention center.
An anxious-looking Alyokhina at one point held up a piece of paper with the words “Did they extend custody of the others?” to journalists and relatives in the courtroom, shrugging sadly when she got her answer.
Both Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova have small children and the group’s legal team spoke of the harm being done to the family by the continued imprisonment of its clients.
“My client is no threat to society and I ask you to either release her on bail or place her under home arrest,” said lawyer Nikolai Polozov. “I would also like to point out that she has no previous convictions.”
Polozov wrote in a Twitter microblog earlier on Monday that reliable sources had indicated Pussy Riot could be freed at Monday’s hearing.
All three women were detained in March after four masked members of Pussy Riot performed a song in Moscow’s largest cathedral against what they said was church support for Vladimir Putin’s presidential election campaign. They have been behind bars ever since.
The song, entitled “Holy S**t,” featured the lyrics “Virgin Mary, drive Putin out!” and came amid unprecedented protests against the twelve-year rule of the former KGB officer. The suspects admit being part of the Pussy Riot group, but say they did not take part in the protest in the landmark Christ the Savior cathedral. Putin called the protest “unpleasant.”
The group members have been charged with hooliganism as part of an organized group. The trial is expected to begin later this month.
A number of protesters, both for and against the group, rallied outside the court during the hearing. Police said there were no arrests.
The hearing came after a host of figures from Russia’s arts world, including some notable Putin supporters, signed last week a letter calling for the suspects to be released. The letter was later backed by the Kremlin’s own rights council. Amnesty International also named the suspects prisoners of conscience in April.
While a number of figures within Russia’s influential Orthodox Church have expressed disquiet at the continued detention of the suspects, Church head Patriarch Kirill criticized in March those believers he said were seeking leniency for the group.
And leading Church official Vsevolod Chaplin said last week that God had revealed to him his displeasure over the protest. “This sin will be punished in this life and the next,” Chaplin cited God as saying.
Pussy Riot first hit the headlines in January, when they raced through a musical diatribe against Putin on a snowy Red Square, calling for “Revolt in Russia!” and chanting “Putin’s got scared” before being detained by police.
