Hearing Into Jailed Pussy Riot Member's Motion Postponed

Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina

NIZHNY NOVGOROD, Russia -- A court in Nizhny Novgorod has postponed a hearing into a motion filed by a jailed member of the Russian feminist performance-art group Pussy Riot to mitigate her sentence.

The judge adjourned the hearing until October 18 after the prosecutor demanded the presence of all nine plaintiffs in the courtroom.

Maria Alyokhina told journalists before the hearing September 26 that the major goal of her motion is to demand that the legal system be open and transparent.

In May, Alyokhina refused to participate in her parole hearing via videolink from the penal colony where she is jailed, demanding that she be physically present.

Alyokhina and another Pussy Riot member, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, are serving two-year jail sentences after being convicted of hooliganism.

They were arrested after staging a protest against President Vladimir Putin in an Orthodox cathedral in Moscow in February 2012.