The pretrial hearings in the case of Pussy Riot, a Russian female punk band, are held behind closed doors in a Moscow court. Police have cordoned off not only the courthouse itself but also the street outside to keep the band’s supporters from even coming close to the building. Any attempt to hold a sign or chant is stopped; policemen grab the offenders and throw them into avtozaks (police buses). The three band members, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, twenty-three; Maria Alekhina, twenty-four; and Ekaterina Samutsevich, twenty-nine—Nadia, Masha, and Katya—are being prosecuted for an unsanctioned “punk-prayer” called “Our Lady, chase Putin out.” The women managed to perform for about thirty seconds in the Moscow Christ the Savior Cathedral before the church’s security guards kicked them out. A music video using the footage shot in the cathedral was distributed on the Web. For that, the three women have been kept in pretrial detention since March; on Friday last week, the judge extended their incarceration for six more months, and yesterday their trial was scheduled for July 30th. They are facing up to seven years in prison.
