Russia police to use lie detector in acid attack case
Police plans to use a lie detector to question witnesses in acid attack on Sergei Filin.
MOSCOW: "Investigators plan to question several witnesses in the case of the attack on Sergei Filin with a lie detector," a spokesman for the Moscow police told Russian news agencies.
Last week police questioned the Bolshoi s star dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze as a witness over the January 17 attack by an unknown assailant who fled after throwing acid into Filin s face and eyes.
The violent incident came after months of squabbling inside what is arguably the world s best known ballet troupe.
A former star dancer himself, 42-year-old Filin is currently in hospital in Moscow and has undergone several operations to save his eyesight and repair the disfigurement he suffered.
Doctors said on Monday his latest eye surgery went well and some vision had returned, but more treatment was necessary.
"Today he has eyesight. I won t say how much, but he sees relatively well after such a (grave) injury," Russia s head ophthalmologist Vladimir Neroyev told Interfax news agency.
The attack on Filin, who has served as artistic director of the Bolshoi ballet since 2011, has horrified the troupe and cast an international spotlight on the sometimes scandalous rivalries within the 237-year-old institution.
In the weeks preceding the attack, Filin had also had his car tyres punctured, his webpage hacked and seen private exchanges from his social networking account published.
Over the weekend, a new Facebook page supposedly in Filin s name circulated a letter via social networks in which the artistic director blamed the attack on the Bolshoi s system of selling its expensive tickets, which he had reportedly long opposed.
The theatre s press office quickly said that both the letter and the Facebook account were fakes, and that the account was later deleted.
In an interview with NTV television channel broadcast on Sunday, Filin said that overcoming the effects of the attack had been "very difficult" and thanked his colleagues in the Bolshoi for giving him support and optimism.
Appearing for the first time without face-covering bandages but with his eyes closed, Filin said in the fuzzy video feed that he wished whoever had ordered the attack had thought of his three sons before "thinking of satisfying their ambitions," or acting on "some internal resentment."
The pale ballet chief said he had told a priest who visited him in hospital that he "forgives all the people who had a hand in this."
"We have investigators and professionals, and I hope we will have some answers soon," he said, without offering his own opinions on why the attack happened.
The Bolshoi s management has linked the attack to internal divisions within the company, while other observers, including Filin s predecessor Alexei Ratmansky, blamed the Bolshoi s lack of "theatre ethics" and unresolved money-related issues such as ticket scalping.
Director General Anatoly Iksanov said last week that he had "specific suspicions about specific people" who may have wanted to harm Filin.
Filin was appointed to the Bolshoi in 2011 and began adding modern stagings to the theatre s classic repertoire. One of his early decisions was to bring the dancer David Hallberg to the ballet, marking the first time the Bolshoi had hired an American dancer as a principal.
Last week, the theatre appointed 46-year-old veteran ballerina Galina Stepanenko as its acting artistic director.
Russia s top officials have called the gruesome incident "an attack on the entire Russian culture" and vowed to bring the offenders to justice.
