Lawyers for Two Imprisoned Pussy Riot Members Quit Case

The lawyers for two jailed members of the punk band Pussy Riot, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova,  announced Monday that they would no longer be representing the women, saying they believed that their continued participation in the case could have negative consequences for their former defendants.  Nikolai Polozov, one of the three lawyers formerly representing the women, said they had decided the publicity they had helped produce around the case had "irritated" authorities and that they had agreed with their clients to remove themselves from the case if the convicted punk rockers were pressured.  Mark Feigin, another of the outgoing lawyers, expressed hope that Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina could be granted early release in late April after the change in legal representation.
The Pussy Riot case has become an international public relations headache for the Kremlin, the latest demonstrating coming on Friday, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested during a panel discussion with President Vladimir Putin that the sentences given to the women were too harsh.


http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/pussy-riot-lawyers-quit-rockers-case/471666.html