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Three members of the Russian punk rock band Pussy Riot pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of hooliganism after performing a song criticizing President Vladimir Putin in a Moscow church, Russia's state news agency reported.

According to CNN, the charge, which carries a potential seven-year sentence, stems from an unusual performance they gave in February.

"Mother Mary please drive Putin away," the band screamed, their faces covered in neon masks, inside Moscow's Christ Savior Cathedral.

The anonymous, feminist protest band called it a punk prayer.

Three of the women were arrested soon after, and have been in custody ever since. Two of the women have young children.

On Monday, band members apologized to Orthodox Christian believers if they felt they had been insulted, state news agency RIA Novosti reported.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29, grinned at cameras as police brought them from a van into the court, waving their handcuffed arms behind their backs.

They appeared in court in an enclosure that forced them to bend down to speak through small window to be heard.
Amnesty International said Monday the trial "never should have taken place."

John Dalhuisen of Amnesty said the singers had been making "a legitimate protest -- this is not a criminal offense. They must be released immediately."

"They dared to attack the two pillars of modern Russian establishment -- the Kremlin and the Orthodox Church. While many may have found their act offensive, the sentence of up to seven years in prison they may expect on the charges of hooliganism is wildly out of all proportion," he said.