The Yakutsk City Court has not ruled in favor of an administrative penalty for two members of the Pussy Riot punk band, Maria Alyokhina and Olga Borisova, who were detained for an unsanctioned protest action in support of Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov on August 7.
“The judge has passed a judgment returning the administrative material to police to remove irregularities,” the court told Interfax on August 7.
The women were convoyed to court following detention by police.
The court and police reported no other details to the news agency.
A day earlier, members of the group held a protest action in Yakutsk near Penitentiary No. 1, where Sentsov is serving his sentence, unfolding a poster reading “Free Sentsov”.
In August 2015, the Rostov-on-Don North Caucasian District Military Court sentenced Sentsov, who was detained in Crimea in 2014, to 20 years in a high-security penitentiary on charges of setting up a terrorist group in the peninsula.
In late February 2012, members of the Pussy Riot punk band performed a so-called punk prayer at the Christ the Savior Cathedral. A video clip of their performance was posted online. Three of them – Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich – were later arrested by police.
In August 2012, the Khamovnichesky District Court sentenced them to two years in a general-security penitentiary for hooliganism. In October of the same year, the Moscow City Court changed Samutsevich’s court judgment to a suspended sentence and released her in court.
The court judgments for Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were upheld. Their sentences were due to expire in early March 2014, but the young women were released earlier, in December 2013, due to the amnesty declared by the State Duma on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Russian Constitution.
