Source: HRO.org (info), 06/06/12

· Persecution of activists   · Public protests

The lawyers acting for Pussy Riot have said that the case of the Pussy Riot “Punk-Prayer” has been passed to the Investigative Committee. Investigators will review the case for involvement of the young women in an offence under Article 282 ("Extremism"). This was announced by the defendants’ defence team at a press conference which took place on 5th June.

According to their lawyer, Mark Feigin, on 7 June the defence team will start to familiarise themselves with the first of seven volumes in the case. They have already prepared a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights. The lawyers explain that they have been unable to file this complaint earlier because the court has held up the transfer of documents.

The defence team said there had been three expert analyses conducted in the case. The first was a psychological and linguistic assessment, conducted from 28th February to 2nd April, which showed the young women were innocent of committing the offence with which they had been charged. Only the one charge, relating to defamation of a group of persons, was substantiated. Thus, the actions of Pussy Riot fall under Article 5.26 of the Administrative Code ("Violation of the law on freedom of conscience, freedom of belief and religious association”). Penalties under this article consist of a fine of up to one thousand roubles.

The next assessment was carried out from 6th April to 16th May. Investigators asked the experts precise questions about the involvement of the young women in the crime, but again they received a negative response.

"For some reason the investigators found it necessary to demanded that experts analyse the comments on the video presentation which was posted on the Internet. Of course, this time their findings affirmed the culpability of the defendants. However, it must be remembered that at this point that the young women were already in the detention, and the commentaries were written by persons unknown, using pseudonyms," Feigin said.

And then we come to the third assessment which was hastily organized and which took just nine days, from 14th to 23rd May. The lawyer Nikolai Polozov suggested, they decided to get this assessment when it became clear that pressure on the experts had not yielded the desired outcome and they needed to look for "more flexible people". And the result of this assessment gave absolutely the opposite result: the young women were found guilty "on all counts," Maria Muromskaya of Kasparov.ru reports.

The defence lawyers pointed out that the investigation refers to a video of the young women’s performance, although it is an "artistic production" and was recorded over the course of several days in different locations. During the press conference the original video of the performance by Pussy Riot in the Christ the Saviour Cathedral was shown. It turns out that in actual fact the young women did not perform the song in the video clip and their “performance” lasted only 20-30 seconds before security staff arrived.

On 4th June it was announced that the investigation into the Pussy Riot case had been concluded. The prosecution has charged Maria Alekhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Ekaterina Samutsevich under Article 213 Section 2 of the Criminal Code ("Hooliganism"). The maximum penalty under this heading provides for up to seven years' imprisonment.

In March the Moscow police arrested three members of the Pussy Riot group for performing an anti-clerical punk-prayer, "Holy Virgin, Get Rid of Putin”, in the Christ the Saviour Cathedral.