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Putin calls for leniency in Pussy Riot trial
Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked a Russian court to be lenient toward feminist punk band Pussy Riot, calling into question Russia's notoriously politicised court system.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked a Russian court to be lenient toward feminist punk band Pussy Riot, calling into question Russia's notoriously politicised court system.
Putin criticised the band's appearance in Moscow's Christ the Saviour cathedral in February, where it performed an anti-Putin "punk prayer" to highlight the Orthodox Church's support for the president.
"If the girls were in Israel and insulted something in Israel, it wouldn't be so easy for them to leave," Putin said. If they "desecrated some Muslim holy site, we wouldn't even have had time to detain them", he added.
Although, he said that the final decision of the three member band -Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich - lies with the courts.
If found guilty, they would face up to seven years in prison on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. They have argued that they were carrying out a political protest against the church's support of Putin ahead of contentious elections that made him president for the third time.
