(Timothy Heritage’s article appeared on Reuters 8/17; via the Drudge Report.)
Three members of a feminist punk band were found guilty on Friday of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred for staging an anti-Kremlin protest in a church, in a case that supporters say put President Vladimir Putin's tolerance of dissent on trial.
State prosecutors want the women from the Pussy Riot group jailed for three years over the protest in February in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral, but the judge did not immediately issue a sentence as she read out the long verdict.
The three young women, in handcuffs, stood in silence in a glass courtroom cage and at times smiled and laughed to each other as the judge, Marina Syrova, read out the verdict.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/17/us-russia-pussyriot-idUSBRE87F1E520120817