Russian playwright Svetlana Petriychuk has been transferred to a prison colony to begin serving her nearly six-year sentence for justifying terrorism in her award-winning play, her husbandsaid Friday.Petriychuk and theater director Yevgenia Berkovich weresentenced last July to six years in prison over their award-winning play, Finist the Bright Falcon, which tells the story of Russian women who fall in love with Islamist militants in Syria.
In December, Berkovichs sentence wasreduced to five years and seven months and Petriychuks to five years and 10 months after an appeal.Both artists, who were arrested in May 2023, pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Finist the Bright Falcon, which received funding from Russias Culture Ministry, won Russias main theater prize, the Golden Mask, a year earlier.The womens defense team insisted that the prosecution was based on contradictory testimony from anonymous witnesses.
At the same time, almost all other witnesses who did not hide their identities testified in favor of Berkovich and Petriychuk.Berkovich wastransported to a prison colony in the western Kostroma region earlier this February.Petriychuk was transported to the Mozhaisk womens prison colony No.
5 in the Moscow region on Thursday after a 10-day transition period in pre-trial detention, her husband Yury Shekhvatov said.Sveta will have to continue to serve this absurd sentence imposed by the military court, Shekhvatov wrote on a Telegram channel devoted to Petriychuks case.After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Berkovich wrote emotional poems against the war.
Her supporters believe her anti-war statements were the real reason for criminal prosecution against her.