Sergey Ponomarev / AP
Freed feminist punk group Pussy Riot member Yekaterina Samutsevich, center, speaks outside a court in Moscow Wednesday.
By Reuters
MOSCOW -- A Russian appeals court on Wednesday upheld the two-year jail sentences handed down to two members of punk band Pussy Riot for a protest against Vladimir Putin in a cathedral, but freed a third member by suspending her sentence.
A Moscow City Court judge said the court was leaving the sentences in place for Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Maria Alyokhina, 24, and issuing a suspended sentence for Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30.
The three women were convicted in August of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred for belting out a "punk prayer" in Moscow's main Orthodox cathedral imploring the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Putin.
Russian Orthodox Church to Pussy Riot punk band: Repent before appeal
The case sparked an international outcry, with Western governments and pop star Madonna condemning the sentences as disproportionate, a view not widely shared in Russia where public opinion was shocked by the protest.
Members of the all-girl punk band "Pussy Riot" (from left) Yekaterina Samutsevich, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova sit in a glass-walled cage in the Moscow court Wednesday.
The three band members said their performance was a political protest and that they have no animus toward Russian Orthodox faithful.
Before the ruling Wednesday, relatives and lawyers for the trio complained of political interference in the original trial and said that Putin's weekend comments on the case in an interview marking his 60th birthday had compromised the appeal.?
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