The three members of the feminist group Pussy Riot who were given two years in jail for their punk prayer stunt want to serve their sentence at the pre-trial detention facility in Moscow, the group’s lawyer said.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, were found guilty of hooliganism and convicted last month for staging an anti-Kremlin “punk prayer” in Moscow’s largest cathedral in February.
By that time, the three have already spent more than five months in pretrial detention, which, according to Russian legislation, equals ten months in prison. The three will therefore be due for release at the beginning of 2014.
“All the three defendants wrote a letter to the pre-trial detention facility’s administration with a request to let them stay in the facility,” lawyer Mark Feigin said.
According to the lawyer, they could be given cooking, cleaning or other duties at the facility.
Feigin said the three women may be facing danger if sent to a penal colony given the “demonization of our defendants” and publicity of the trial, which sparked international condemnation and split Russian society between traditional conservatives and liberal opposition supporters.
The lawyer also announced on his Twitter account that the punk group’s supporters are planning to stage rallies in more than 100 cities around the world on October 1 when the Moscow City Court is scheduled to hear the appeal of the two-year prison sentence.