Missing Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova may be sent to Siberia colony

The husband of incarcerated Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova believes she is being moved to a penal colony in the depths of Siberia, after vanishing from sight 17 days ago.

While the exact camp Tolokonnikova will be held in remains uncertain, her husband Peter Verzilov believes she will be transferred to a colony in the city of Krasnoyarsk, 2,600 miles east of Moscow and in the heart of Sibera.

Speaking to Rolling Stone, he said a prison source had confirmed it is "100 per cent that it's Krasnoyarsk region," adding that he believed it to be Colony 50, a remote camp located near the town of Nizhny Ingash.

The prison source expects Tolokonnikova to be moved to the camp within the next few weeks, Verzilov added.

Verzilov has been protesting outside Colony 14, the prison she was being detained in, regularly since her abrupt disappearance. Last week he said: “We think they moved her to a big city to hide her. It seems they got sick of these protests.

“They want to cut her off from the outside world."

Speaking to Buzzfeed, her father also expressed concern for her welfare following her disappearance. “No one knows anything. There’s no proof she’s alive, we don’t know the state of her health. Is she sick? Has she been beaten?”

Her supporters are claiming the decision to move her to such a remote prison is a punishment for the nine-day hungerstrike she undertook in protests against conditions in her previous colony. Her refusal to eat forced officials to agree her transfer to Mordovia when her health began to deteriorate.

Tolokonnikova and fellow member Maria Alyokhina are serving sentences for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” after running into Moscow's biggest cathedral and singing songs calling on the Virgin Mary to remove President Vladimir Putin from office.

A third member, Ekaterina Samutsevich, was also jailed but freed on appeal. The other two are not due for release until next March.