Pussy Riot Row Rolls On

Tolokonnikova has been on hunger strike for a week and is reportedly on a drip in a prison hospital in Mordovia. She’d earlier written an open letter describing the abuses in her prison colony.

She says her husband Pyotr Verzilov – the artist and activist – has been unable to contact his wife for 94 hours.

He also says not even her lawyer can get access to her.

Amnesty, which in July called for Tolokonnikova and fellow band member Maria Alekhina to be released, says the decision to move 23-year-old Tolokonnikova to solitary confinement is yet another sign of Russia’s “suppression of any form of free speech.”

“The Russian authorities must immediately and unconditionally release the activists and quash all charges against them,” said Amnesty’s Moscow office director, Sergei Nikitin.

The prison authorities have denied Tolokonnikova’s allegations of abuse and have also claimed that the conditions in her solitary cell are better than in a shared one.

However, Tolokonnikova has previously told her lawyer that she is held in freezing conditions, with access to cold water only and in very dim light.

She also said internal prison rules prevent her from sitting on her bed during the day.

The sentence against a third Pussy Riot member – Ekaterina Samutsevich – was suspended on appeal last October.

However, she too had spent many months in detention while awaiting trial.

The three women were jailed after staging a protest against Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Moscow’s main Orthodox cathedral in February 2012.