LONDON, United Kingdom – Pyotr Verzilov, the husband of jailed Pussy Riot band member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, who was said to have gone missing, has said that he spoke to his wife from a tuberculosis hospital in Siberia.
Verzilov told the BBC that his wife was in the prison hospital in Krasnoyarsk, western Siberia, where she was undergoing tests for “various conditions”.
The whereabouts of the jailed Pussy Riot member became known for the first time since she went missing 26 days ago.
“Basically someone who works in the prison told me she is in the hospital. So we sent our lawyer there and he spoke to the prison head, who eventually confirmed she is there,” Verzilov said.
Verzilov said he was waiting outside a prison in Nizhny Ingash, a remote settlement on the Trans Siberian Railway some 200 km from Krasnoyarsk, when he heard the news.
“She is ok. She said the conditions in this hospital are adequate and she is being treated for some health complications that developed in her previous place of detention,” he was quoted as saying by www.dailymail.co.uk.
According to the BBC, Verzilov said his wife had told him that conditions at the hospital were much better than at the penal colony in Mordovia, where she had been held previously, and that she had not been beaten during the 26 days she was missing.
Russian prison authorities issued a statement confirming that “convict Tolokonnikova has arrived to the institution of the Russian prison service in the Krasnoyarsk region”.
A spokesman said her exact location had been sent to her lawyer, who had instructions not to tell anyone else.
Tolokonnikova and two other band members were sentenced to two years in jail last year, after staging an anti-Vladimir Putin protest in a Moscow cathedral. In the song they implored the Virgin Mary to “throw Putin out”.
They were charged with hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. One member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was released on appeal in October.
But after her appeal attempt failed, Tolokonnikova went on hunger strike. She had complained of abuses by prison staff at Mordovia, including working long hours and being denied drinking water in her prison cell. She was moved to a medical unit and her whereabouts were unknown since October.
Her husband, who was on his way to Krasnoyarsk when he spoke to the BBC’s Daniel Sandford, says he hopes to see her soon.