by Nina Achmatova

Court ruling follows prosecutor's request. Experts who looked at the punk prayer in Moscow cathedral say it contains appeals to religious hatred. The Orthodox Church welcomes the ban on the band.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - A Moscow court has deemed "extremist" video clips by the Pussy Riot female punk band, which has been at the centre of acrimonious debate in the past year over state-Church relations in Russia.

The court ruling grants the prosecutor's request, ordering the offending material be blocked, including the website pussyriot.com and the Pussy Riot blog at livejournal.com where all of their music is available.

Known simply as Pussy in Russia, the group is among the nominees for Time Magazine's 'Person of the Year' in 2012 because of the great influence they exerted this year.

For its part, YouTube said it would not take any decision regarding the clips until it received official documents.

The court said it based its ruling on conclusions by a panel of experts who studied the footage, claiming the video had "elements of extremism".

According to expert opinion, the clips of a punk prayer in Moscow cathedral contain "words and actions which humiliate various social groups based on their religion".

The performance, the court found, included hidden calls for riots and resistance to the authorities, as well as mass unrest. For this reason, group members were sentenced to two years in prison.

The court video ban will be contested in a higher court. The one Pussy Riot out on a suspended sentence, Yekaterina Samutsevich, has already called the ruling an act of "censorship."

Promising to appeal the verdict, she added that the group's protest would continue and that its videos would be moved to foreign websites to get around the ban.

Meanwhile, the Moscow Patriarchate has welcomed the court decision. For Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, head of the Department for the Cooperation of Church and Society Orthodox Church, "There are no grounds not to respect this court decision."

For the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church, words are used in the video that insult the faithful and the name of God is mentioned along with dirty words that offend men of the cloth.

In their punk prayer, Pussy riot call on the Virgin to free Russia from Vladimir Putin.

During their trial, the three women apologised for offending religious believers but insisted that their performance was political in nature.

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