Court Turns Down Alyokhina's Request for Deferred Sentence

By The Moscow Times

March 4, 2013

The Perm Regional Court on Monday turned down Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina's request to have her sentence suspended and upheld an earlier ruling that she must serve the remainder of her two-year prison sentence.

While retaining her original innocent plea, Alyokhina's lawyers appealed to the Berezniki District Court to have the remainder of her sentence suspended until her 5-year-old son turned 14.

During the hearing, prosecutors argued against deferring the sentence, claiming that Alyokhina violated prison rules like not waking up when told to do so by prison officers.

Alyokhina is currently serving two years in a minimum security facility in Berezniki on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred for the group's now infamous "punk prayer" performance in Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral.

Last October, fellow band member Yekaterina Samutsevich had her sentence suspended after arguing that she'd been thrown out of the cathedral by security before she could participate in the performance. The third band member convicted for the "punk prayer," Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, is serving her term at a penal colony in Mordovia.

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