12.03.2014
Homophobia was not considered as an aggravating circumstance in the case of the attack on Dmitry Chizhevsky . A refusal to reclassify the offense from "an act of hooliganism" to "a hate crime motivated by hatred against the LGBT social group" was received from the investigator O. A. Novgorodtseva . Judge E.V. Nikitin concluded that the denial of that reclassification "can not cause any threat to the constitutional rights and freedoms of the parties of the criminal trial".
A similar complaint filed by Anna Prutskova, the second victim of the homophobic attack during the "Rainbow Tea Party" at the office of La Sky on November 3 2013, will be administered by the court in the near future. However, Anna doesn’t expect a positive outcome. Two of the complaints filed by her lawyer on the investigator Novgorodtseva’s refusal to take into account the hate motive have already been rejected by the prosecutor and the head of the investigative body .
The victims’ lawyers, Olga Zeitlina and Valentina Frolova, still believe that the proper qualification of the attack - namely, recognizing the motive of hatred against the LGBT social group – is crucial for the effective investigation of the case. Otherwise, not only the hate crime aspect is being disregarded but also the suspect pool is being narrowed significantly.
In this situation it is important to note that as of March 4, 2014 the investigation was suspended. The victims and their representatives - lawyers of LGBT organizations "Coming Out" and "Russian LGBT Network", plan on appealing the decision in court.
LGBT organization "Coming Out", which represents one of the victims, an activist Anna Prutskova, considers the investigators’ as well as the court’s work in the given case unsatisfactory. The attack on the La Sky office on November 3, 2013 was homophobic hate crime. The investigators’ failure to properly classify the committed crime is indicative of their intention to conceal the fact of a homophobic attack, the number of which in St. Petersburg has increased substantially in the last year.