Jan. 23, 2013 Reuters
MOSCOW (Reuters) - One of two jailed Pussy Riot members said she received death threats and complained of abuse at a prison colony where she is serving a two-year sentence for a punk protest against President Vladimir Putin in Moscow's main cathedral.
But Maria Alyokhina and fellow group member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova said they did not regret the protest, despite describing harsh prison conditions in interviews published on Wednesday by the opposition-leaning Novaya Gazeta newspaper.
Alyokhina, 24, who lost an appeal this month to have her sentence deferred to care for her five-year-old son, said she was transferred to solitary confinement in November after being threatened by inmates she suspects of acting on the orders of prison officials.
"(They said) if you stay in this unit - that's the end of you... Human rights are grossly violated here," said Alyokhina, who is being held at a penal colony in the Urals Mountains region of Perm.
"What is the most difficult thing? Coming to understand how this system works, how it creates a slave mentality," she said.
"Ignorance, cowardice, betrayal, denunciation is the norm."
