Jailed Pussy Riot performer asks court for release on parole

Russian band Pussy Riot performer Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, who is currently in jail serving a two-year sentence, is seeking release on parole, according to her lawyer.

The 23-year old Tolokonnikova’s lawyer Irina Khrunova told a Russian newspaper that her client is asking a regional court that she be released on parole on several grounds, including the fact that she has a five-year-old daughter, the Herald Sun reports.

Khrunova said her client has all the every reason to be released soon saying Tolokonnikova had good character references, did not have conflicts in the prison camp, and had received job offers she could take up on her release, the paper reported.

Khrunova added the court is not due to hold a hearing on her parole request until April at the earliest. Under Russian law prisoners are eligible for parole when they have served half their sentences.

Tolokonnikova, a philosophy student, was sent to prison camp in October along with band mate Maria Alyokhina, after being convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred for singing a “punk prayer” in a Moscow cathedral protesting President Vladimir Putin’s close links with the Russian Orthodox Church, the paper added.

The women have been in custody since first being detained in March 2012, several weeks after the February cathedral protest, the paper concluded. (ANI)