Pussy Riot star wins prison battle

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, a member of the feminist punk band, Pussy Riot. Photo / AP

Pussy Riot hunger striker Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has been moved to a new prison after a climbdown by the Russian authorities.

The 23-year-old political activist, who is serving a two-year sentence for 'hooliganism', has been refusing food for two weeks in protest at the harsh conditions in her Soviet-era gulag, 300 miles east of Moscow.

It was her second hunger strike - started after she sent a letter to a news website revealing abuses of prisoners at the Mordovia penal colony.

She spoke of death threats from senior prison officers, slave-like labour conditions, female inmates being forced to strip naked as they sew uniforms, the banning of toilet breaks and punishment beatings.

'Inmates are afraid of their own shadows,' she wrote in the letter. On Friday, officials at the Federal Penitentiary Service bowed to her demand to be transferred to another prison.

They said it was 'for her personal safety' - but would not reveal where she had been moved to.

- Mail On Sunday