MOSCOW, July 16 (RAPSI, Diana Gutsul) - On August 2 the Tverskoi District Court in Moscow will resume the hearing of the defamation lawsuit filed by the former Pussy Riot lawyers against Kommersant Publishers and lawyer Irina Khrunova, who represented one of the punk group members during the cassation stage, one of the plaintiffs told RAPSI.
The hearing was postponed until August upon the request of the plaintiffs, who could not attend the previous hearings for valid reasons. Nikolai Polozov, Mark Feigin and Violetta Volkova filed a defamation lawsuit after Kommersant published an article titled, "A punk prayer can take you to Strasbourg."
Polozov said the group's former lawyers were portrayed in the article as incompetent for failing to send the necessary documents to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg on time, while in fact the ECHR had accepted their complaint and even assigned it a number.
The lawsuit against Khrunova stems from her statement in the article that: "When the defense team filed the first complaint (with the ECHR), the court asked them to send additional documents, but they did not submit them to the court, so the application hasn't been even considered for review."
The plaintiffs have asked the court to have the defendants publish a refutation and to pay them damages, with Kommersant Publishers to pay 500,000 rubles ($15,330) to each plaintiff and Khrunova to pay 50,000 rubles ($1,533) to each plaintiff.
In February 2012, five young women wearing brightly colored balaclavas staged a punk rock prayer in Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral. An edited video of their performance was posted on the Internet and caused a public outcry.
In August 2012, the Khamovnichesky District Court sentenced Yekaterina Samutsevich, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina to two years in a prison settlement for hooliganism.
In October 2012, the Moscow City Court changed Samutsevich's verdict to a suspended sentence and released her immediately based on her new attorneys' argument that she had been seized by security guards prior to reaching the altar.
The sentences of Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were upheld.
In April 2013, the Zubova Polyana District Court in Mordovia rejected Tolokonnikova's request for parole. Alyokhina's request for parole was rejected by the Berezniki court on May 23.
