Jailed Pussy Riot member Nadya Tolokonnikova, previously reported as missing by family members, has been located after two weeks of no information about her whereabouts, with the political activist being sent to a new penal colony in Siberia, over 4,500km away, according to her husband.
Pyotr Verzilov took to Twitter saying he had received information from a reliable source that the 23-year-old is being sent to penal colony number 50 in the town of Nizhny Ingash, four time zones away from Moscow.
Tolokonnikova, who had been hunger striking and wrote an open letter condemning her horrific prison conditions, was transferred out of her Mordovia prison colony on 21st October, with her husband and father unaware of her location until now.
Verzilov says that this is the Russian authorities way of retaliating for her letter, saying, “Essentially, she is transferred 4,500 kilometres from central Russia to the heart of Siberia as punishment for the resonance of her letter.”
Russia’s rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin has said Tolokonnikova is in good health and that it’s standard practice to transfer prisoners without informing their families “in the interests of security”. He told Interfax, “She is eating and they say her health is acceptable.”
Tolokonnikova and her Pussy Riot bandmate Maria Alyokhina were sentenced to a two years in prison on charges of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” following an anti-Putin protest in a Moscow church. They are scheduled to be released in March 2014.
(via Huffington Post)
