Double ‘Pussy Riot’ murder investigated in Russia
Authorities in Russia open an investigation into a double murder of a pensioner and another woman after their bodies were discovered next a wall scrawled with an alleged pro-Pussy Riot message.
The bodies of the 76-year-old and 38-year-old women were discovered in a flat in Kazan, in the south of Russia, yesterday. On the walls was a message, supposedly written in blood, saying: “Free Pussy Riot.”
Multiple knife wounds were found on their bodies, investigators said. The deaths emerged after neighbours reported a strong smell emanating from the flat.
Although the deaths, with the message, have prompted Kremlin supporters to claim that the female punk collective were inciting violence, investigators have cast doubt on whether the perpetrator was really linked to the band at all.
Pussy Riot were found guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred and jailed for two years in a Moscow court on August 17. The women, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, said their protest was an act against President Putin and was aimed at drawing attention to the role of the church in politics.
The two women are believed to have been killed towards the end of last week.
‘Provocation’
Kazan investigator, Andrey Sheptitsky, said the murderer was either psychotic or a drug addict who was trying to cover up the crime by attributing it to the band’s supporters, and that the killer was “was trying to avoid suspicion” by misleading police.
But much of Russian media coverage claimed that Pussy Riot supporters “committed” or “inspired” a double murder.
Lawyer Nikolai Polozov, who represented the jailed band members, called the case “either a horrendous provocation or…psychopathic”.
“I am sorry that some freaks are using Pussy Riot’s band name,” he said.
Pyotr Verzilov, Tolokonnikova’s husband, told Russian news outlet Gazeta.ru: “This is an attempt to strike at all supporters of the group.”
But Kristina Potupchik, a pro-Putin blogger and former spokeswoman for a militant youth group known for its violent pranks against opposition and Kremlin critics, said in a post that the band’s supporters “will not get away” after the killing. She also compared them to US mass murderer Charles Manson, who also used the blood of his victims to write on the walls of their houses.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said that the substance in which the words were written on the walls had not yet been confirmed, but was presumed to be blood.