Moscow court adjourns Pussy Riot appeal to October 10

MOSCOW, Russia (UPDATED) – A Russian court on Monday, October 1, adjourned to October 10 the appeal of three female members of punk band Pussy Riot against their two year prison camp sentence after one of the women renounced her lawyer.

The judge at the Moscow city court agreed to adjourn the appeal hearing to allow defendant Yekaterina Samutsevich to find a new representative after she said she wanted to replace her lawyer due to differences over the case, an AFP correspondent said.

“I would like to renounce my lawyer,” Samutsevich, who was represented by lawyer Violetta Volkova, told the court. “My vision of the criminal case is not the same as their (the Pussy Riot defense team’s) vision.”

She said she had found a new lawyer but had not concluded an agreement with the person yet.

Samutsevich, 30, Maria Alyokhina, 24, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22 were all present in the glass-fronted defendants’ cage as the hearing opened in the packed courtroom.

The other two women said they backed Samutsevich’s claim but did not seek new lawyers for their own cases.

“This is neither good nor bad (for the appeal),” Tolokonnikova’s husband Pyotr Verzilov told reporters. “It is a technical thing.”

The trio were found guilty in August of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred for storming into Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in February and staging an anti-Kremlin performance. They have been held in detention since March. – Agence France-Presse