Jailed Pussy Riot member can't be found in prison colony

Concern for jailed Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova mounted on her 24th birthday yesterday, after her husband said she could not be found in the prison colony where authorities reportedly sent her in October.

Tolokonnikova has not been seen since being moved on October 22 after protesting against alleged prison abuses at her former colony in central Russia and holding a hunger strike.

Tolokonnikova is one of two Pussy Riot members now serving two-year prison terms for performing a protest "punk prayer" in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral in the run-up to presidential elections last year.

She and fellow bandmember Maria Alyokhina are due for release in March. Russia's human rights ombudsman said this week that Tolokonnikova was being transferred and was safe.

Her husband Pyotr Verzilov believed that she was on her way to a new colony in Siberia. However having made the trek to the snow-covered Krasnoyarsk region, Verzilov said yesterday that his wife was not there.

"The authorities of the colony in the taiga (region) told us that they don't have Tolokonnikova and don't know when she will arrive. 19 days without contact with Nadya," he wrote on Twitter.