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The trial against the members of the punk band Pussy Riot is over, the verdict will be pronounced on August 17

The trial against the members of the punk band Pussy Riot is over in Moscow. On Wednesday, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich delivered the last plea in the courtroom. The defendants believe in their soonest release. The pronouncement of the court verdict was scheduled on August 17. Meanwhile, the actions in defence of Pussy Riot are planned all over the world soon.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova went to the court in the t-shirt “No Pasaran”, the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily reported. She has already come to conclusion that the current trial is against the entire Russian state administration system, which resumed the standards of the Stalin-era arbitrary legal penals of three judges, rather than against three vocalists of the punk group. In her last plea Maria Alekhina described her vision of the situation, “We are innocent and the whole world knows it. We are supported by members of the British parliament, the British prime minister meets our president not with the question about the Olympics, but why three innocent young women are standing trial!” Yekaterina Samutsevich does not understand, “why the president had to involve the religious aspect in this trial,” as it was possible to find many other ways to put them in prison. They do not see any difference if they had performed the punk prayer in the underground passage or at the main church of the country. Although, she realizes that the trial damaged strongly the Russian authority abroad.

“The authorities took some time to think it over. Probably, the top authorities will decide how not to lose their image before the whole world. It went down to the situation when any guilty verdict will inflict a serious damage to Russian reputation,” Samutsevich’s lawyer Violetta Volkova told the Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily. The inclination to politics was logical in the last plea of a member of the punk band, Volkova said.

“The authorities decided to take a pause to coordinate their actions,” lawyer Mark Feigin told the Novye Izvestia daily. The pause was taken in response to the massive support, which the punk band Pussy Riot gained only on Tuesday, including from pop star Madonna and John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono, another lawyer Nikolai Polozov said.

Mark Feigin told the RBC daily that an action in defence of the punk band will be organized all over the world soon. “Most likely in next few days we will form an international organizing committee, which will set a date, probably this will be the day, when the verdict will be pronounced. We appeal to all people to go out for actions in their support on that day all over the world,” he noted.