Medvedev Says Rockers Have Served Enough Jail Time for Cathedral Performance

By ELLEN BARRY

MOSCOW Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev said Wednesday that he believed that three female punk rockers jailed for a profane stunt in Moscows main Russian Orthodox cathedral should be released rather than serve out their two-year sentences, weighing in on a case that has drawn widespread condemnation in the West. At a meeting with officials from United Russia, the pro-Kremlin party that he leads, Mr. Medvedev was careful to assure his audience that he did not approve of the womens performance of an anti-Kremlin song at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, saying that even thinking about it made him nauseated. But he went on to say that further incarceration would be unproductive the most explicit commentary to come from a high-ranking official since the Aug. 17 sentencing. Imprisonment is a very severe I would even say a frightening responsibility, Mr. Medvedev said. What has already happened that this well-known group of girls have been in prison quite a long time is a very serious punishment for everything they did, regardless of the sentence. The six months they have already served, he said in remarks that were shown on television, is fully enough to make them think about what happened, because of their stupidity or for some other reasons. So prolonging their time in conditions of imprisonment seems not to be productive, he added. It is not clear whether Mr. Medvedevs words will have any effect, but a lawyer for the punk rockers, who perform as Pussy Riot, said he thought that the Russian authorities might want to rid themselves of a case that has turned out to be more damaging than expected. In the end the authorities got themselves caught in a trap, the lawyer, Nikolai Polozov, told the radio station Kommersant-FM. The international community gives an unambiguous assessment of this case, and Russias reputation is rapidly falling, and the authorities are trying to find some solution so that they can emerge from this episode with a pretty face. Mr. Medvedev, who was president from 2008 until May, attracted support from urban liberals during his term, and his agreement to step down to make way for Vladimir V. Putins return as president helped set off protests last winter. He has said little about the raft of repressive measures introduced since he stepped down, or about Pussy Riot, which has been held up by pro-

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Kremlin commentators as an example of dangerous radicalism that has infected Russian society and must be stamped out. A film that ran on Tuesday on the state-controlled Rossiya-1 channel asserted that Pussy Riots performance was planned and financed by an exiled tycoon, Boris Berezovsky, an enemy of Mr. Putins. In August, shortly before the sentencing, Mr. Putin himself said he did not believe that the three women should be judged too severely for this. Though they could have received a sentence of as much as seven years, prosecutors requested a three-year sentence, and a judge gave them two. Mr. Polozov noted that Mr. Medvedev had also taken a personal interest in the case of Taisia Osipova, the wife of an opposition activist who was charged with drug violations that her supporters said were trumped up. Mr. Medvedevs involvement evidently did her no good a judge last month sentenced her to eight years in prison, double the time that prosecutors had requested. Obviously, you cant say that the judge will do whatever Dmitri Anatolievich says, he said. But if the judge shares his opinion, obviously we would consider that a plus.

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