Law enforcement officials searched the homes of several relatives of exiled Pussy Riot members as part of a criminal investigation into the alleged distribution of “war fakes,” the protest group said Thursday.
Russia’s Interior Ministry issued international arrest warrants last year for Pussy Riot members Maria Alyokhina, Olga Borisova, Diana Burkot, Alina Petrova and Taso Pletner. In January, a Moscow court ordered all five women to be placed in pre-trial detention in absentia on charges of spreading “false information” about the military.
Borisova told The Moscow Times that police “stormed” the St. Petersburg apartment of her parents around 5 a.m. local time and looked through their personal electronic devices. She said the search lasted about four hours, but added that she did not know any further details.
An investigator reportedly told Alyokhina’s mother that the search of her home was related to her daughter’s anti-war music video. Police also raided the home of Alyokhina’s father, who the exiled news website Mediazona said is seriously ill and unable to walk.
Some law enforcement officials were reportedly wielding sledgehammers as they searched the home of a relative of Pletner in St. Petersburg. In the city of Yaroslavl, an investigator told Petrova’s mother that her daughter had “danced naked in a church,” referencing the group’s 2012 protest performance in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral.
At least one relative of a Pussy Riot member has been summoned by the police for questioning as a witness, Mediazona reported.
Under Russia’s wartime censorship laws, spreading “false information” about the armed forces carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.
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