Pussy Riot bandmember Maria Alyokhina, freed from a Russian prison last night under a Kremlin-backed amnesty, slammed the measure as a mere publicity stunt. She said she would have preferred to remain in the Nizhny Novgorod jail.
"I don't think it's an amnesty, it's a profanation," she told the Dozhd television channel, saying it only applied to a tiny minority of convicts. "I don't think the amnesty is a humanitarian act, I think it's a PR stunt. If I had a choice to refuse (the amnesty), I would" have done so.
Alyokhina, 25, and bandmate Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 24, whose two-year sentences for hooliganism in a Moscow church would have run out in early March, were granted amnesty last week after Parliament approved a Kremlin-backed bill.
Earlier yesterday, Mikhail Khodorkovsky appealed to Western governments to help him campaign for the release of other political prisoners still languishing in Russia's jails.
![Nadezhda Tolokonnikova.](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/resizer/v2/BAJK6BGK4OVA7CQ7GK6LPCUCYA.jpg?auth=e376f890eb9a65b2a4f7d8ae54c51ab2bd4732dc04a06c8be29908e99d727527&width=16&height=20&quality=70&smart=true)