On July 20 and 23, 2012, two preliminary hearings of the case on charges of hooliganism of three members of the Pussy Riot group were held in the Khamovnichesky Court of Moscow. They considered a dozen different motions made by both lawyers and prosecutors.
At the first meeting, the most interesting issue for all was the extension of the expiring term of detention of the accused in the pre-trial detention center - the prosecution insisted on this. The prosecutor's office motivated the extension of the term of imprisonment by the fact that the accused could abscond. Not all of them are registered, permanently employed in Moscow, and those who are registered do not live at the place of registration. The defenders asked to release the girls under the surety of various well-known personalities, of whom 53 were on the list of lawyers, but only seven were present in the court. The court decided this issue in favor of the prosecutors - the detention period was extended by six months, until January 12, 2013.
The main result of the second session was the announcement of the date for the commencement of the consideration of the case on the merits - the court appointed it for July 30. In addition to all this, the lawyers' petition to summon about thirty additional witnesses and experts, including the President of Russia and the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, was rejected. The atmosphere in which both sessions took place turned out to be quite calm - the supporters and opponents of Pussy Riot gathered at the court did not show aggressiveness. Perhaps that is why the interest of journalists in the second session fell sharply.
Pussy Riot - Vagina Riot is a female punk rock band formed in the summer of 2011 with no permanent lineup. The group gained fame not for its songs, but for the places where public actions were held - the Moscow Metro, Red Square, SIZO, etc. The participants consider the illegality and provocative nature of their performances necessary, so there is nothing unexpected in the fact of detention. The arrest took place after the action in the altar of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which the participants called a "punk prayer". In the criminal case initiated on February 26, 2012, this action was qualified as hooliganism. On March 3, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina were detained, who stated that they had nothing to do with Pussy Riot and the action in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. On March 16, Yekaterina Samutsevich was added to the number of detainees. The criminal case against the rest of the participants in the action was separated into a separate proceeding, and their names are either unknown to the investigation, or simply not made public. Members of a group can be sentenced for hooliganism for up to 7 years. However, in the text of the "punk prayer" there was a negative reference to Putin, so simple hooliganism received public resonance as a rebellion against the system and acquired a political connotation.
