(Reuters) - State prosecutors demanded a nine-year jail sentence on Friday for a dancer accused of ordering an acid attack that nearly blinded the Bolshoi Ballet's artistic director and exposed bitter rivalries at one of Russia's great cultural institutions.
Pavel Dmitrichenko, a former soloist at the Bolshoi, showed no emotion as he sat still in a courtroom cage listening to the prosecution summary in a trial that began a month ago.
The prosecution also asked for 10 years in prison for Yuri Zarutsky, who is accused of throwing the acid in artistic director Sergei Filin's face last January, and six years for Andrei Lipatov, accused of driving him to and from the scene.
"Dmitrichenko's motive was a conflict between Filin and Dmitrichenko," prosecutor Yulia Shumovskaya told the Moscow court, saying the dispute was caused by the dancer's disappointment at not being given good roles by Filin.
Filin's lawyer, Natalia Zhivotkova, said: "All the defendants are guilty and, from our point of view, deserve no mercy."
Filin, 43, was left writhing in agony in the snow outside his apartment late at night before he managed to get help after the attack by a masked assailant.
He has since returned to the Bolshoi Theatre but always wears dark glasses and needs more surgery to save his sight.
Dmitrichenko, 29, addressed the Moscow court after the prosecution, reading from written notes. He reiterated that he had wanted Filin roughed up but never intended acid to be thrown in his face.
"What happened to Filin because of Zarutsky was awful," he said. "I never asked anybody to do what happened to Filin. Zarutsky said he would hit Filin, give him a couple of black eyes."
"I was not against Zarutsky just beating Filin up ... (but) I did not know anything about this liquid (thrown in Filin's face) and could not have imagined anything like this would happen," he added.
A verdict could come next week.
The case has tarnished the reputation of the colonnaded Bolshoi theatre, which stands a stone's throw from Moscow's Red Square and the Kremlin, and has caused one of its worst crises since its foundation in 1776.
The theatre has made management changes to try to turn the spotlight back on the stage, but the toxic backstage rivalries have at times flared up during the trial, including when Filin came face to face with his alleged attackers in court.
(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova, Editing by Timothy Heritage and Gareth Jones[1] )
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