Nadya Tolokonnikova, the imprisoned member of Pussy Riot who went missing earlier this month, has turned up at a penal colony in Siberia, according to The Associated Press.
Update: According to Rolling Stone, Tolokonnikova is actually in at a hospital in Siberia, where she’s having procedures and tests related to her recent hunger strike. A Russian prison official told her husband, Peter Verzilov, that Tolokonnikova’s “conditions and treatment were OK, but that the one thing was she was in very strict isolation.”
Vladimir Lukin, a human rights ombudsman for Russia, told news agency ITAR-TASS (via Rolling Stone) that Tolokonnikova was quarantined for 10 days following a prison transfer (which is apparently standard protocol in Russia), which is why her family and friends were unable to contact her. While he would not divulge her exact whereabouts, Lukin said Tolokonnikova would be meeting with both her husband and lawyers within the week.
Lukin also revealed that Tolokonnikova has ended her hunger strike, which began in September.
Tolokonnikova and fellow Pussy Riot members Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alekhina were sentenced to two years in prison after being found guilty of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred or hostility” stemming from a protest at Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral. The collective were denouncing the ties between Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime and the Russian Orthodox Church. Samutsevich has since been freed; however, both Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina are to remain in prison until March 2014.
Since receiving her sentence, Tolokonnikova has launched a series of protests from within her cell. In September, she wrote an open letter detailing the horrific conditions she and fellow inmates experience on a daily basis, in addition to the aforementioned hunger strike. When her family reported her missing earlier this month, Tolokonnikova’s husband Petya Verzilov theorized it was the Russian government’s way of silencing her from further protests.
