Google – AFP, Stuart Williams (AFP), 18 February 2014
Sochi —
Russian police on Tuesday detained the two most famous Pussy Riot members in
Sochi, host of the Winter Olympics, questioning the pair for several hours in a
theft case.
Nadezhda
Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, who were only released from penal colonies
under an amnesty late last year, were arrested along with several others in the
morning and then set free after four hours in police custody.
Kremlin
critics slammed the arrests as a public relations disaster for the Winter
Games, which still have just under a week to run in the Russian Black Sea
resort.
Tolokonnikova
and Alyokhina walked out of the police station with their faces concealed by
the colourful balaclavas that have been their trademark since their first
performances in 2011.
They got into
a waiting taxi and were driven away, an AFP correspondent said.
Police said
they were arrested along with several others over accusations of theft from the
hotel where they had been staying. They were picked up in central Sochi, some
30 kilometres north of the main Olympic venues.
The pair
had already been in Sochi for two days on a visit aimed at recording a new
performance opposing Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has spearheaded the
Sochi Olympics project from the start.
"They
are trying to detain us so that we don't walk around Sochi. We want to say the
truth about what is happening in Sochi," Tolokonnikova told AFP from the
police station after being detained.
She accused
the police of using force against them and said they would make a complaint.
"They
used rough physical force against us. They beat us. The fact that they used
force is awful... We have bruises and scratches."
Tolokonnikova
said that she and Alyokhina had gone to Sochi to perform a new song titled
"Putin will teach you how to love the motherland."
She said
that before their arrest they had already managed to stage "some Olympic
performances" without giving further details.
Tolokonnikova
revealed that they had already been held and questioned by police for seven
hours on Sunday and 10 hours on Monday.
-'No PR
agency can help'-
A third
member of Pussy Riot -- named only as "Tank" -- was also arrested,
along with a photographer, Yevgeny Feldman.
Local
environment group Ecological Watch on the Northern Caucasus (EWNC) said in a
statement that Semyon Simonov of the Memorial rights group and local activist
David Khakim had also been arrested.
Khakim was
detained for several hours on Monday after holding a one-man picket to support
Yevgeny Vitishko, an environmental activist jailed during the Games.
All those
arrested Tuesday morning have now been released.
Tanya
Lokshina of Human Rights Watch in Moscow said that the "ludicrous
detention... will earn Russia more negative publicity than any public action
they could organise."
Russian
protest leader Alexei Navalny added: "What kind of idiot do you have to be
to arrest Pussy Riot in Sochi during the Olympics? No (PR) agency... can help
here."
The two
women were in 2012 convicted of hooliganism and sentenced to two years in
prison colonies after staging their so-called "punk prayer" in the
Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. They were released early in December
under a Kremlin-backed amnesty.
Their stunt
came just ahead of Putin's re-election to the Kremlin in March 2012 and was
aimed at denouncing the Orthodox Church's support of the Russian strongman
during the campaign.
The trial
turned them from little-known feminist punks who staged a handful of guerrilla
performances in Moscow to the stars of a global cause-celebre symbolising the
repression of civil dissent under Putin.
Earlier
this month, the pair appeared at a star-studded concert in New York where they
were cheered and feted by Madonna, who has become one of their main supporters.
However,
other members of Pussy Riot criticised the pair for the performance, saying
that it breached Pussy Riot's principles.
Tolokonnikova
and Alyokhina have insisted they are still part of the collective.
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