Pussy Riot appeal adjourned as one sacks her lawyers

A Russian court adjourned an appeal hearing for three members of the Pussy Riot punk band against their conviction for a protest against President Vladimir Putin in a church after one of the trio sacked her lawyers.

About 100 people — Pussy Riot supporters in colourful T-shirts and mainly elderly Russian Orthodox Christians — filled corridors of the Moscow court.

Pussy Riot supporters released three large balloons — a red, blue and a yellow one, reading “Pussy Riot!” — into the sky, while one Orthodox campaigner’s banner read: “Shame to lawyers, prison for blasphemers.”

One of the band, Yekaterina Samutsevich, sitting in a glass and metal courtroom cage alongside her two band mates, told the Moscow court she disagreed with her lawyers’ handling of the case and the hearing was put off until Oct 10.

“My position on the criminal case does not match their (the lawyers’) position,” Samutsevich told the small courtroom, packed with supporters, family members and reporters. She gave no details.

Western governments regard the three women’s two-year sentences as excessive, and opposition groups see it as part of a crackdown on dissent by Putin.

Samutsevich, 30, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Maria Alyokhina, 24, in August were convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred after storming into the Christ the Saviour Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Moscow in February and belting out a “punk prayer” asking the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Putin.

A pardon or a reduced sentence would require the women to admit guilt but they have refused to do so.