MOSCOW, March 12 (Itar-Tass) – Bolshoi Theatre ballet artistic director Sergei Filin, who is convalescing in Germany after acid attack, officially denied the mass media reports alleging his plans not to return to Russia.
"Sergei Filin asked to officially announce that the mass media reports alleging his plans to stay abroad do not correspond to reality," member of the Board of Trustees’ executive committee Mikhail Sidorov told Itar-Tass on Tuesday.
"On the contrary, he plans to return home as soon as he gets well, because he cannot imagine not working at the Bolshoi Theatre," Sidorov said.
Bolshoi Theatre staff hopes Filin would start working in the summer.
Sergei Filin, 42, was attacked near his home in Troitskaya Street in Moscow on January 17. An unidentified man splashed acid in his face and fled. Filin wish rushed to hospital with serious face and eye burns. He was initially treated in Moscow, and is now in a German clinic.
Moscow's Taganka court sanctioned the arrest of three suspects. They were charged with malicious infliction of serious harm to health.
The suspected mastermind – a leading Bolshoi Theatre soloist Pavel Dmitrichenko – was detained on March 5, together with Yuri Zarutsky who has a previous criminal conviction and driver Andrei Lipatov, who brought the perpetrator to the scene of crime.
According to the investigator, they all confessed to the crime. The motive behind the attack was "Dmitrichenko's enmity toward Filin due to professional activities."
The investigation was handled by a team of best experts of Moscow criminal police.
The group examined a number of leads, such as mistaken identity and professional activity. Police questioned witnesses, Bolshoi Theatre staff and the victim's acquaintances. The detectives zeroed in on the circle of friends of one of the soloists – Pavel Dmitrichenko – who was acquainted with an unemployed man with a criminal record, the Investigative Committee said.
"It has been ascertained that the mastermind and his accomplices had tailed the victim and noted the time he returned home. To communicate between themselves, they obtained mobile phones registered to other persons. The perpetrator bought acid in a Moscow region shop and evaporated water from it to increase its concentration.
On the day of the crime, the attackers knew the time when the victim would leave the Bolshoi Theatre. "The mastermind informed them that Filin was headed for his home, where the perpetrator had been waiting for him," an Investigative Committee official said.