St. Petersburg's Investigative Committee said they arrested an individual who stabbed LGBT Rights activist Yelena Grigoryeva eight times "in a state of alcohol intoxication" on Thursday, according to Deutsche Welle.
Police said the victim and the suspect had "known each other previously" and that they had evidence the event was not a hate crime as some had believed but did not name the suspect.
They would only say he was a man born in Soviet Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia in 1981
Yyhod, a St. Petersburg-based LGBT group, said investigators were failing to look beyond the "personal" reasons to search for possible motives in the attack.
The organization said the police refused to "verify and take into account a hate motive" and revealed a screenshot which showed Grigoryeva, 41, posted on an anti-LGBT website "Pila."
Officials took down the website earlier this week.
Grigoryeva was a prominent activist and would frequently protest for LGBT rights in Russia.
Friends and associates said she reported multiple threats made against her in the past, but police never acted on the tips.
“An activist of democratic, anti-war and LGBT movements Yelena Grigoryeva was brutally murdered near her house” on Friday night, opposition campaigner Dinar Idrisov wrote on Facebook earlier this week.
Brutal attacks on LGBT individuals were common across Russia but perpetrators are rarely prosecuted for hate crimes.
The Council of Europe, the continent's primary human rights body, called on Russia to conduct a "full and transparent investigation into the murder."
The Council said the LGBT+ community needed more protection from rising hate crimes in Europe and Russia.
-WN.com, Maureen Foody
Photo:
AP / Pavel Golovkin
