MOSCOW — Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, whose whereabouts remained unknown for two weeks, is officially confirmed to have arrived at a prison in Krasnoyarsk region, Siberia.
Tolokonnikova is currently in a prison hospital in Krasnoyarsk region, Vladimir Lukin, Russia’s Human Rights Commissioner, was quoted as saying on Nov. 13 by the local wire service ITAR-TASS.
“After a transfer to another prison inmates are quarantined for 10 days,” he said, adding that Tolokonnikova had terminated her hunger strike.
According to Lukin, Tolokonnikova will be able to meet with her husband and her lawyers over the next few days. He wouldn’t specify which prison she is located at though.
However, the art group Voina, affiliated with Pussy Riot, said on its Twitter account @gruppa_voina that Tolokonnikova apparently is at prison #50 in the village of Nizhni Ingash, but prison management wouldn’t confirm it.
Tolokonnikova, who is serving a two-year sentence for Pussy Riot’s anti-Putin punk prayer at Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral in February 2012, went on hunger strike last September, protesting dismal conditions in her prison #14 in the Central Russian republic of Mordovia. She subsequently suspended her hunger strike due to health complications but later resumed it demanding a transfer to another prison.
In October, Russia’s prison authority FSIN said Tolokonnikova had been transferred from prison #14 but wouldn’t specify where exactly. For two weeks, there was no information regarding her whereabouts whatsoever, triggering rumors in the Russian blogosphere and on social media that she could be dead.
