MOSCOW, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- A member of the Russian punk protest group Pussy Riot has been transferred to a new prison after staging two hunger strikes in protest of her conditions.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova will also have a court hear a request next year by her lawyer to commute the remainder of her two-year sentence. Tolokonnikova and another bandmate were each sentenced to two years in prison after staging a "punk prayer" in Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral in February 2012.
Her lawyer said Tolokonnikova has young children and has faced brutal conditions since being placed in the Russian prison system. Tolokonnikova went on two hunger strikes after saying she and others at the prison in Mordovia were forced to endure inhumane conditions. A court rejected her request to open an investigation against the deputy warden, who Tolokonnikova said threatened to kill her.
She has since been transferred to the prison at Krasnoyarsk, ending more than a month of speculation about where she was being held.
