Pussy Riot punk trio should not have been jailed, says Medvedev

Published on 03/11/2012 00:00

RUSSIAN premier Dmitry Medvedev has said members of the Pussy Riot punk band should not have been jailed for their February protest in Moscow’s main cathedral against president Vladimir Putin.

Three band members were convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred and sentenced to two years in prison in August.

Last month, one of the trio, Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29, was released on appeal, but the others, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Maria Alekhina, 24, were sent to prison camps.

Yesterday Mr Medvedev said: “These [young women] are unpleasant figures, both on the outside and on the inside. They provoke extremely negative emotions in me, so unpleasant that I don’t even like to talk about it. But if I was a judge I wouldn’t have sent them to prison. They’d already been [in detention before their trial], and that was enough.”