MOSCOW CITY - A member of punk band Pussy Riot was freed on appeal on Wednesday but a Moscow court upheld prison sentences for two others imposed over a raucous cathedral protest against Vladimir Putin, who said they had got the jail terms they deserved.
Yekaterina Samutsevich walked free from Moscow City Court after six months behind bars but the appeal judge who suspended her two-year sentence said fellow band members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina should serve out their terms.
"I have mixed feelings," Samutsevich
said outside the court, where she was greeted by applause and whistles
from a crowd of about 150 people in the rain. "I'm happy, of course, but
I am upset about the girls."
Samutsevich, 30, Tolokonnikova, 22, and Alyokhina, 24, were convicted in August of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred for a "punk prayer" imploring the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Putin, and sentenced to two years in jail.
The case had sparked an international outcry, with Western governments and pop star Madonna condemning the sentences as disproportionate, a view not widely shared in Russia where public opinion was shocked by the protest.
Source: Yahoo News...More...
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