Russian authorities confirm missing Pussy Riot member in Siberia

Russian authorities confirmed Thursday that jailed Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has been moved to a new prison in Siberia, after three weeks of uncertainty about her whereabouts.

Tolokonnikova is currently serving a two-year prison term, stemming from when her group protested Vladimir Putin's 2012 re-election bid by performing a song called “Virgin Mary, Kick Out Putin” in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior on Feb. 21, 2012. After Putin was elected to his third term as president, two members of Pussy Riot were imprisoned, and a third Pussy Riot member had her sentence suspended.

According to Tolokonnikova's husband Pyotr Verzilov, who spoke to his wife by phone, Tolokonnikova had been weakened by her hunger strike and is currently at a prison hospital in the Siberian Krasnoyarsk region.

For the past three weeks, friends and the band’s supporters expressed concern over Tolokonnikova's situation as the Russian authorities moved her thousands of miles by train across Russia without saying where she was.

"Convict Tolokonnikova has arrived to an institution of the Russian prison service in the Krasnoyarsk region," the region's prison service said in a statement.

Tolokonnikova, 24, had been missing for 24 days after being moved out of her original prison colony in central Russia's Mordovia region. She had earlier published a letter in Russian media alleging prison abuse.

Her letter said the colony has round-the-clock "slave labor," with 17-hour days in a sewing workshop, beatings and lack of sanitary facilities.

She started a hunger strike on Sep. 23, 2013, saying in a statement, “I will not remain silent, watching in resignation as my fellow prisoners collapse under slave-like conditions. I demand that human rights be observed at the prison.”

While Tolokonnikova’s transfer caused worry for some, it was nothing out of the ordinary in Russia. Prison authorities are not required to tell relatives of the convicts' whereabouts until 10 days after transferring them to a new place. Transfers often take weeks as convicts are slowly moved on trains with stopovers in various prisons across the country.

Tolokonnikova's long transfer and information vacuum had led rights groups to demand information, with Amnesty International citing "serious concerns regarding her safety and well-being."

Tolokonnikova and fellow band member Maria Alyokhina, who is being kept in the Ural region of Perm, will have served their sentences by March 2014.

Pyotr Verzilov — the husband of Tolokonnikova, a performance artist and activist — spoke to Al Jazeera this week and was asked whether he thought his wife’s activism was worth it, given the consequences. Verzilov replied, “It’s not like you can speak in those terms. Obviously, any political activist in Russia has to do what he feels has to be done and then the government makes him pay a certain price. So it’s not like you know this price beforehand, and you can choose your actions knowing that price.”

Al Jazeera and wire services