Court Upholds Pussy Riot Sentences

A Russian court on Wednesday upheld the convictions of two members of the punk trio Pussy Riot but freed the third by suspending her sentence. A Moscow judge said he was leaving the two-year sentence in place for Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Maria Alyokhina, 24, while issuing a suspended sentence for Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, since she had been prevented from entering the church by a security guard. The women were arrested in February after staging a “punk prayer” at a Russian Orthodox church and in August were convicted and sentenced to two years in jail for hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.