The European Court of Human Rights is ready to consider the complaint of Ekaterina Samutsevich. As the Kommersant newspaper writes on Saturday, December 8, the ECHR secretariat notified the lawyer of the Pussy Riot participants, Irina Khrunova, about this. Representatives of the Strasbourg court also said that they were waiting for detailed complaints from Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina.

Samutsevich, the only one of those accused in the case of the “punk prayer” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior who did not receive an actual prison sentence, asked the ECHR to find the Russian Federation guilty of violating several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights. In particular, she complained of an unfair trial, torture, illegal arrest and violation of the right to freedom of speech.

In the letter, the ECHR Secretariat asked Khrunova whether she also intended to represent the interests of Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina, and the lawyer answered in the affirmative. At the same time, Khrunova noted that the possibilities of the two convicts are limited: they will not be able to complain about illegal arrest. The fact is that Pussy Riot's former lawyers - Mark Feigin, Nikolai Polozov and Violetta Volkova - have already filed a complaint about illegal arrest in Strasbourg, but did not provide the documents required by the court in a timely manner, and now filing a second complaint is no longer possible.

Khrunova, who succeeded in replacing Samutsevich with a suspended sentence and then also began representing the interests of Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina, highly appreciated the position of the Strasbourg court. “I worked a lot through the ECHR,” said the lawyer, “but I have never seen such awareness of the judges about the situation and such interest in obtaining new documents on the case.”

Tolokonnikova, Samutsevich and Alekhina were found guilty of hooliganism for holding a “punk prayer” in February 2012 and were sentenced in August to two years in prison each. Khrunova achieved a reduced sentence for Samutsevich, drawing the court's attention to the insignificant role of her client in the scandalous action. In November, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina also terminated their cooperation agreement with Feigin, Polozov and Volkova: according to some reports, the girls were dissatisfied with the quality of the lawyers’ work and suspected them of wanting to cash in on Pussy Riot’s fame.

Strasbourg court will consider Samutsevich's complaint