An appeals court in Russia has freed one of the jailed members of punk band Pussy Riot while upholding the sentences handed down to the two remaining members in prison.
The court judge said on Wednesday that he would suspend the sentence for 30-year-old Yekaterina Samutsevich, while leaving the two-year jail sentences for Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Maria Alyokhina, 24, unchanged.
In August the three band members were jailed for two years on grounds of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred after performing a "punk prayer" in Moscow's main Orthodox cathedral imploring the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Vladimir Putin, the president.
The appeals court judge ruled that Samutsevich's sentence should be suspended since she had been thrown out of the cathedral by guards before she could participate in the performance.
The three women had maintained that their performance was a political protest and that they did not have anything against the Orthodox contingent of Russia.
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