Family of Imprisoned Member of Pussy Riot Says She's Missing

Nadya Tolokonnikova, one of two members of Pussy Riot who was being held in prison in Mordovia, has not had any contact with her family for 10 days, BuzzFeed reports, leading them to believe that she’s missing. This silence follows a facility transfer given to Tolokonnikova after she wrote an open letter denouncing the conditions she was in.

“No one knows anything,” her father told BuzzFeed. “There’s no proof she’s alive, we don’t know the state of her health. Is she sick? Has she been beaten?”

“This is basically the only way they have to punish Nadya — ‘let’s cut her off from the outside world,'” added her husband Petya Verzilov, with whom she’s started an NGO to work on prison reform. When Jezebel spoke with Yekaterina “Katia” Samutsevich about Tolokonnikova and her fellow imprisoned Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina in July, Samutsevich said that those outside of Russia can help the women by sending money for legal fees and by writing letters. They are supposed to be released in March.