The two remaining Pussy Riot members are to serve their prison terms in a colony outside Moscow, their lawyer said on Monday.
Lawyer Mark Feigin said Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Maria Alyokhina, 24, wanted to stay at the pretrial detention center where they are presently being held, and work in the kitchen.
“I brought certificates showing that they have sufficient skills to work as cooks. But they were rejected,” he said, adding that no reason was given for the denial.
A Moscow court last Wednesday freed Pussy Riot member Yekaterina Samutsevich at an appeal hearing, but ruled that the two other women in the anti-Putin punk group must serve out their two-year sentences.
They are now set to be transferred to a penal colony hundreds of miles from Moscow.
The three women were jailed for two years on August 17, after a court found them guilty of “hooliganism with the aim of inciting religious hatred” in a decision that sparked worldwide protests and drew sharp international criticism.
Lawyers for the group have rejected the argument that the group’s 40-second performance of a song entitled “Holy S**t” was anti-religion, saying it was a protest against the Orthodox Church’s support for Vladimir Putin ahead of the presidential elections on March 4.