(Newser)
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Punk rockers Pussy Riot might be looking at three years in prison, but that didn't cool their revolutionary ardor yesterday. "This is a trial of the whole government system of Russia, which so likes to show its harshness toward the individual," said 22-year-old Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, one of the trio on trial for religious hooliganism. "If this political system throws itself against three girls it shows this political system is afraid of truth." Tolokonnikova used her final statement to slam Vladimir Putin's "totalitarian-authoritarian system," insisting the trio's protest song against Putin in a Moscow cathedral was "opposition art," reports the Guardian.
"Even though we are behind bars, we are freer than those people," she said, looking at the prosecution from inside the glass cage where she and Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich have spent the nine-day trial. A prosecutor earlier called for three-year prison sentences for the young women, saying that using "swear words in church is an abuse of God." A judge will announce his verdict next week.
