A Russian court on Friday threw out a claim for moral damages over the Pussy Riot punk performance from a Siberian Orthodox believer who had not been present in the church when the women sang. In the first of several civil suits launched against Pussy Riot members, who have been sentenced to two years in prison for their protest, the woman from the city of Novosibirsk had asked for 30,000 rubles ($943) in damages.
Her lawyers conceded the woman did not witness the protest more than 3,000 kilometres (1,900 miles) away in Moscow but said she viewed the group's video and that her suffering was caused by the women's desecration of Church traditions. Moscow's Kuntsevsky district court ruled that lawyers for the woman, Irina Ruzankina, had not managed to prove their claims that Pussy Riot caused her moral and physical suffering, RAPSI legal news agency reported.
The same court will hear two other civil suits against Pussy Riot on September 20 filed by two activists from Novosibirsk's branch of a conservative group that has campaigned against the punk band. Three members of Pussy Riot were last month sentenced to a corrective labour colony for hooliganism motivated by religious hatred after they belted out a song criticising President Vladimir Putin in Moscow's main cathedral in February.
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