Day 2 of Pussy Riot Trial in Moscow

By Natalya Krainova

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: August 1, 2012 (Issue # 1720)

wikimedia commons Three members of the punk band Pussy Riot are on trial and face up to seven years in prison under hooliganism charges.

MOSCOW — One of the plaintiffs in the trial against female punk band Pussy Riot reluctantly accepted the apologies of the defendants for their performance at a Moscow cathedral as the trial entered a second day Tuesday.

Meanwhile, popular British writer Stephen Fry called on his more than 4.6 million followers on Twitter “to do everything to help Pussy Riot” and “pressure Putin” in connection with the trial, in which three young women face up to seven years in prison on charges of hooliganism for singing a song that contained obscenities and denounced President Vladimit Putin at Christ the Savior in February.

The three defendants — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22; Maria Alyokhina, 24; and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29 — have been under arrest since March.

The trial opened Tuesday in a courtroom in Moscow’s Khamovnichesky District Court that could accommodate only 10 journalists, leaving about 30 unable to attend the hearing, Interfax reported.

Later that day the hearing was transferred to Monday’s courtroom, the largest in the court, the news agency said.

The defendants asked the judge, Marina Syrova, to interrupt the trial because they hadn’t had enough sleep or food, Interfax reported. Syrova first rejected the request, citing medical references, which said the defendants were fit to attend the trial.

When the band’s lawyer Violetta Volkova threatened to ask for Syrova to be replaced, the judge promised to interrupt the trial so the defendants could eat and sleep.

On Monday the women said the venue for their impromptu performance might have been inappropriate, but they insisted that they had never been motivated by religious hatred, only a desire to persuade church leaders not to meddle in politics.

“If our passion looked offensive, we sincerely regret that,” Tolokonnikova said in a statement read by Volkova, in the courtroom.

Tolokonnikova called the band’s performance an “ethical mistake,” while another band member, Alyokhina, asked prosecutors to treat the infraction as a misdemeanor rather than a felony.

The trio pleaded not guilty to felony charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.

Hooliganism by itself is a misdemeanor that carries a 15-day jail sentence or a fine of up to 2,500 rubles ($80).

Valentin Lebedev, head of the Union of Orthodox Citizens, a group of church laity, dismissed the apologies as “a sophisticated form of hypocrisy,” Interfax reported.

Kirill Frolov, head of the Association of Orthodox Experts, an influential group of religious scholars, called the apologies “a typical attempt to avoid responsibility,” according to Interfax.

According to a transcript of an interview with Britain’s Times newspaper published Monday on the Russian government’s website, Medvedev said the band members would have faced “a more severe punishment … in some countries” than they might in Russia.

Another defense lawyer, Nikolai Polozov, expressed concern that Medvedev’s declaration that Pussy Riot would have faced harsher punishment in other countries was meant to pressure the judge to hand down the maximum seven-year sentence.