Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unexpected call for leniency in the Pussy Riot trial failed on Friday to convince the wary defense that the three members of the all-girl punk band will be set free soon.
Growing global concern about Russia’s latest politically tinged trial — this one pitting three women in their 20s against the Russian Orthodox Church — saw Putin break silence about the controversy for the first time on a visit to London this week.
“I do not think that they should be judged too severely,” he said in reference to a February “punk prayer” performance that the balaclava-clad band members staged inside Moscow’s biggest cathedral against his rule.
The Russian strongman — believed to have the final say in most decisions and one who is rarely contradicted by the courts — added that he expected the band members to “draw their own conclusions” and learn from their mistakes.
“I hope that the court will make the right, well-founded ruling,” he added.
The comments seemed to have left the beaten-down defense team in a state of disbelief at what briefly looked like a turn of luck that ran counter to a week of hearings during which the prosecution had its way with the Moscow court.
“I treat Putin’s statement as a signal — as a certain turning point,” an optimistic co-defense lawyer Mark Feygin said before the start of Friday’s hearings.
“It could be the system’s signal about how to behave in the trial since international pressure has mounted greatly,” he said in a telephone interview.
The punk band’s one-minute stunt inside the Christ the Savior Cathedral — itself a symbol of the Church’s resurgence under Putin’s 12-year rule — has turned into a global cause celebre symbolizing Russia’s lack of freedoms.
Group leader Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and bandmates Maria Alekhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich have already been in pre-trial detention for five months and could face seven years if convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.
Their case has drawn the interest of Western governments and international pop stars, who don Pussy Riot shirts during performances and tweet about them to their hundreds of thousands of fans.
However, the spirits of Feygin and other defense attorneys seemed to be sagging again badly by Friday evening after the presiding judge had barred 14 of the 17 defense witnesses from testifying in court.
“In the end, we are only going to question the defendants’ two teachers and one of their classmates,” the Interfax news agency quoted judge Marina Syrova as telling the courtroom.
“Nothing has changed,” Feygin tweeted by Friday evening.
“Putin lied to everyone again,” co-defense attorney Nikolai Polozov added on his own Twitter account.
The prosecution had earlier sought to keep all the defense witnesses from attending the hearings — a move they justified by claiming their irrelevance to the case.
“The OMON [riot police] is pulling my witnesses out of the courtroom,” Feygin tweeted shortly after the judge’s decision.
The list of the original defense witnesses included the prominent protest leader and anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny and the award-winning novelist Lyudmila Ulitskaya.
Pussy Riot supporters had earlier expressed fears that Putin had made his London comments primarily to calm Western anger rather than push for the women’s release.
Putin has rarely bowed in the face of Western pressure on domestic issues and spent the first months of his third term raising penalties on protesters and branding groups with Western funding as “foreign agents.”
Pussy Riot’s attorneys have said that their best — and possibly only — form of defense rested on drawing global condemnation to what they see as disproportionate punishment for a prank stunt.
Hollywood star Danny De Vito joined the ranks of the band’s growing global celebrity fan club on Friday by tweeting about them to his 2.3 million followers.
“Mr Putin ... Pussy Riot... set ’em free,” the actor wrote.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of