Pussy Riot members serving their term in penal colony ask for penal labor

Defendants of the Pussy Riot punk bank is requesting changing the sentence for Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina to penal labor instead of penal colony, attorney Irina Khrunova told Itar-Tass. The lawyer noted that the convicts could work off their term in charity or the media. On August 17 Moscow’s Khamovniki court sentenced three members of Pussy Riot - Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich - to two years in a prison colony on charges of hooliganism aimed at inciting religious hatred after their punk prayer in Moscow’s Christ Savior Cathedral. On October 10, 2012, the third woman was released on appeal. The sentence for other two members of the band remained unchanged. Alyokhina is serving her sentence in Nizhny Novgorod Region and Tolokonnikova - in the Republic of Mordovia.