Pussy Riot Tweet Selfie: Members Arrested In Sochi Accused Of Robbery

Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, two members of the Punk/Art protest group Pussy Riot were arrested in Sochi where the Winter Olympics are taking place.
 
They recently spent two years in prison charged with hooliganism and were only released just before Christmas. The women were arrested in 2012 for singing a Punk protest song in a Moscow cathedral.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova told the BBC’s Steven Rosenberg that she and Maria Alyokhina were being held at a police station after being detained on suspicion of “theft”. They have not yet been officially charged.

Ms Tolokonnikova said that they had arrived in Sochi on Sunday to perform a new song, Putin Will Teach You To Love Your Motherland, about “political repression in Russia”.

They have now been released by police the activists said earlier on Twitter. “We have been arrested and are accused of robbery,” Ms Tolokonnikova Tweeted. Police stated they were being questioned in connection with a theft at the hotel where they were staying.

The Pussy Riot members’ have already claimed to ‘not go quietly’. Alyokhina’s first words after her release were critical of the government, a sign that this fight is likely to get more personal.  Alyokhina, told Russian TV today that her views of President Putin had not changed and that the amnesty was “a profanation” and “a PR exercise”.

Photo: Pussy Riot members tweeting selfie from the back of a police wagon in Sochi.

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