Russia frees Pussy Riot member, keeps 2 in jail

A Russian appeals court Wednesday ordered the release of one member of anti-Kremlin punk band Pussy Riot but upheld the two-year prison sentences against the two other members. In a major surprise, Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, was released in the courtroom after her lawyer successfully argued she was not fully involved in the group's cathedral performance of a song opposing President Vladimir Putin. The court gave her a two-year suspended prison camp sentence. Samutsevich walked out into the crush of waiting reporters and hugged her friends and her father, looking dazed and calling the decision completely unexpected. "Of course, I am glad but I am upset because of the girls, that their sentences have not been changed," she said, before being quickly ushered by her friends into a waiting car.  Samutsevich, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, were contesting their conviction for hooliganism motivated by religious hatred over performing the song in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in February. The judge at the Moscow city court Larisa Polyakova gave Samutsevich the suspended term. However the two-year prison camp sentences of Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were upheld. The decision was met by cheers in the court and the girls hugged emotionally in their glass cage as they said farewell. "This is of course unexpected," Yekaterina's father Stanislav Samutsevich told AFP after the ruling. "This is a great happiness." Samutsevich at the first appeals hearing on October 1 she announced she was changing her lawyer and new lawyer argued she had been apprehended before taking part in the performance. Irina Khrunova said a security guard had grabbed her client and her electric guitar as soon as the performance began. "The Punk Prayer took place without Samutsevich. She had already been taken out of the church," Khrunova said. The decision sparked speculations as to what led the judge to free Samutsevich but not the other defendants, who are both mothers of young children. "We are glad that (Samutsevich) was freed," said Tolokonnikova's lawyer Mark Feigin, but added that the decision may make things harder for the two jailed convicts. "It would seem that we are dealing with some sort of political game. It entails of breaking up the members of Pussy Riot, of forcing them to relate differently to the conviction," he said. He said the defence next plans to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. Amnesty International said the Wednesday decision is a "half-measure". "No-one should be fooled -- justice has not been done today," the rights group said in a statement. Calls for releasing the women have been made by world figures from Madonna to Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi while the women have been nominated for the EU parliament's prestigious Sakharov prize for freedom of thought. The women have been held in a Moscow prison since their March arrest and will only be transferred to a prison camp -- likely far from the Russian capital -- after the confirmation by the Moscow city court. Earlier, all three had defiantly maintained their innocence, telling the court their cathedral performance of "Virgin Mary, redeem us of Putin!" was aimed at the Russian president and not religious believers. "There is nothing anti-religious in the actions of Pussy Riot, it was political," Tolokonnikova told the court in her remarks. Alyokhina said: "If the verdict remains unchanged we will go to the prison camp and we will not stay silent even if we are in Siberia." Putin's latest comments in a television documentary last week gave little hint that he wanted to see any mercy for the women. In a special film made by state-owned NTV and aired on Putin's 60th birthday Sunday, the Russian leader laughed when the interviewer asked him about Pussy Riot, calling the band "talented" for making everyone repeat its "indecent" name. Pressed to comment on the court's initial decision in August to jail the three women, Putin said: "It was right to arrest them and it was right that the court took the decision that it did."