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Pussy Riot activist quarantined after transfer to new prison

A meeting of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova with her husband and lawyers will be arranged shortly

MOSCOW, November 13, 17:50 /ITAR-TASS/. Pussy Riot punk group activist Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, who is serving a sentence for hooliganism, is now in a ten-day quarantine in a prison hospital, Russian ombudsman Vladimir Lukin said in an interview to Itar-Tass. He did not name the penitentiary where she was kept.

After transfer to another prison, inmates are quarantined for ten days. A meeting with her husband and lawyers will be arranged shortly, Lukin said.

On Tuesday, the Russian ombudsman's press service, citing the administration of the Federal Penitentiary Service /FSIN/, said Tolokonnikova, as a native of the Krasnoyarsk territory, would be serving her sentence there. The measure is expected to facilitate her resocialization.

Meanwhile, Mordovia's investigators promised a new probe into her complaint about a deputy prison chief's murder threats. In a previous probe, the Investigative Committee reported that it could not find evidence to substantiate her claims.

Tolokonnikova was on a hunger strike from September 23 through October 1 in protest against alleged threats from a deputy prison chief.

In August 2012, Moscow's Khamovniki district court found three Pussy Riot activists - Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich - guilty of hooliganism and religious hate during a scandalous 'punk prayer' in the Christ the Savior Church in Moscow. Each was sentenced to two years in a general regime penitentiary. On October 10, Moscow City Court softened the verdict for Samutsevich, giving her a suspended sentence. The two other women are due to be released from prison next March.