One member of the Russian punk band, Pussy Riot, is free today after performing a musical protest against Russian President Vladimir Putin at a Russian cathedral earlier this year, but her two fellow bandmates remained incarcerated.
According to The Daily Mail, The Moscow City Court Wednesday suspended the sentence of Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, who, along with Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22-members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot-were convicted in August of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, which carries a two-year prison sentence in Russia.
The incident occurred inside Russia's main cathedral in February, when band members, dressed in neon-colored dresses and tights, with homemade balaclavas on their heads, performed a 'punk prayer' asking the Virgin Mary to save Russia from Putin.
While Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova performed that night, Samutsevich , who plays guitar for the band, was apparently apprehended by guards and thrown out before she could remove her instrument.
Thus, her lawyers argued, Samutsevich did not take part in the performance. Video footage of Pussy Riot's February performance, found on CNN's web site, showed that Samutsevich was not one of the four women who took part in the protest.
Samutsevich was set free, but the appeals court upheld the two-year prison terms for both Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova.
The Huffington Post reports that Samutsevich, speaking alongside her band mates at court from inside a glass cage, had these remarks.
"If we unintentionally offended any believers with our actions, we express our apologies," said Samutsevich.
"The idea of the protest was political, not religious," she said. "In this and in previous protests we acted against the current government of the president, and against the Russian Orthodox Church as an institution of the Russian government, against the political comments of the Russian patriarch. Exactly because of this I don't consider that I committed a crime."
The case drew international attention and an outcry from artists such as Pete Townshend of The Who, Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand and Corinne Bailey Rae, calling for the band's release, CNN reported in August.
Civil rights groups were upset with Wednesday's ruling.
"To see these two women sent to a Russian penal colony for the crime of singing a song undercuts any claim that Putin and the Russian government have to democracy and freedom of expression," Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty International USA, told the Huffington Post Wednesday in a telephone interview from Washington.
According to Fox News, Putin recently said the jail sentences on the band members were justified because "it is impermissible to undermine our moral foundations, moral values, to try to destroy the country."
However, Pussy Riot's actions have also drawn praise around the European community. The Ottawa Citizen reported Wenesday that the European Parliament is considering the band as one of several finalists in the European Union's annual Sakharov human rights award.
A European Parliament statement said that the ban's sentencing focused "the world's attention on the unscrupulous restriction of civil rights and the absence of the rule of law in Russia."
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