Two members of the Russian punk protest band Pussy Riot were released from jail Tuesday after being detained three days in a row by cops in Sochi, the host city of the Winter Olympics.
No charges were filed against Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina, who were held along with several other people near the city’s ferry terminal, a popular spot for fans enjoying the Olympics.
Police said they were being questioned in connection with a theft at the hotel where they were staying.
The pair documented their latest ordeal on Twitter, confirming they were in town to protest.
“We are in Sochi to hold a Pussy Riot action,” Tolokonnikova wrote in Russian. “On the 16th we were detained for seven hours. On the 17th, we spent 10 hours with the F.S.B. [a Russian intelligence agency] and today we are in a police wagon, accused of theft.”
Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were let out of prison in December and recently paid a visit to New York – where the free speech advocates met behind closed-doors with Mayor de Blasio.
Tolokonnikova said that the duo arrived in Sochi on Sunday to perform a new song, “Putin Will Teach You To Love Your Motherland,” about “political repression in Russia,” the BBC said.
Russian human rights activist Semyon Simonov told the Associated Press that he was with the two women when they were stopped and accused of theft.
Simonov said several other activists were also taken in by cops at the same time and that they were all being held at a police station in Adler, a Sochi suburb where the Olympic Park is located.
Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were convicted of hooliganism after staging a protest in Moscow’s largest cathedral in 2012 in opposition to President Vladimir Putin’s government.
Earlier this month six other members of Pussy Riot signed an open letter saying the two were no longer members of the punk rock collective.
The band said the pair had forgotten about the “aspirations and ideals of our group” and should not have appeared at an Amnesty International concert while in New York.
The others who were detained with them also were released Tuesday.
