Pussy Riot member seeks prison isolation

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MOSCOW, Nov. 23 (UPI) -- Maria Alyokhina, one of the two jailed members of Pussy Riot, will be put in solitary confinement for the next three months at her own request, officials said.

Alyokhina, 24, asked to be placed in isolation over "strained relations" with her fellow inmates, a regional prisons spokesperson told RIA Novosti on Friday.

She and 23-year-old Nadia Tolokonnikova, along with a third member of the band, Yekaterina Samutsevich, were sentenced to two years in prison for hooliganism motivated by religious hatred related to a performance at Moscow's main Orthodox cathedral. Samutsevich was released from prison after she appealed her case.

Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina are serving their sentences in a penal colony in the Perm region, about 700 miles from Moscow.