Pussy Riot to Start Prison Rights Organization Called Justice Zone

Days after Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova walked out of a Russian prison, the pair held a press conference detailing their next moves.

“We feel a huge responsibility for people who are in prisons,” Tolokonnikova said at news conference in Moscow on Friday, the first one since the two women were released from prison on Dec. 23 under a recently adopted amnesty bill. …

Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina said they will form a non-governmental human rights organization, “Zona Prava” (“Justice Zone”), focused on protecting prisoners’ rights. They also hope to collaborate with former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was released last week after ten years in prison, but rule out taking money from him.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t their first meeting with press. The former prisoners endured a television interview earlier this week with Ksenia Sobchak, a Russian socialite and daughter of Vladimir Putin’s mentor who joined the anti-Putin protests last year. To say it was a bad interview would be a bit of an understatement, guv’nah.