Zee Media Bureau
Moscow: A local court here on Tuesday declared an ex-Bolshoi dancer guilty and has sentenced him to six years jail for ordering a terrible acid attack, which nearly blinded the ballet`s director.
The judge today pronounced Bolshoi soloist Pavel Dmitrichenko guilty in the January 17 attack on Sergei Filin. She said that Dmitrichenko and two other men had made plans to hurt Filin.
"We had hoped it would be less," Pavel`s father, Vitaly Dmitrichenko, said as he left court.
The case is being considered to be one of the worst scandal in the Bolshoi`s history.
However, the judge didn`t spell out the role of each of man in the opening pages of the verdict.
The prosecutors asked for a nine-year sentence for Dmitrichenko, 10 years for ex-convict Yuri Zarutsky, suspected of carrying out the attack, and six years for their driver, Andrei Lipatov.
The attack on Filin highlighted vicious backstage bickering and intrigue at the renowned theater. Filin lost most of the sight in one eye and 20 per cent in the other.
Reports suggest that as the verdict of the guilty was read today by the judge in the court, Pavel Dmitrichenko was looking very nervous.
Artem Ovcharenko, a principal at the Bolshoi who testified as a prosecution witness, said that Dmitrichenko had "his own sense of justice."
