Five Years After Georgiy Gongadze’s Murder Those Who Instigated the Killing Remain in the Shadows - RSF
photo.unian.net Five years after the 16 September 2000 disappearance of online editor Georgiy Gongadze, whose decapitated body was found on 2 November 2000, an investigation led to the killers but the instigators have still not been named by the prosecutor’s office, despite repeated promises by President Viktor Yushchenko, according to a press release obtained by UNIAN from the Reporters Without Borders.
Prosecutor-General Sviatoslav Piskun announced the closure of the investigation on 8 August and police officers Valery Kostenko, Mikola Protasov and Oleksandr Popovych have been charged with abducting and killing the 31-year-old editor of opposition news website Ukrainska Pravda (www.pravda.com.ua). A fourth suspect, General Olexi Pukach, is being sought under an international arrest warrant. Gongadze’s widow, Myroslava, and mother Lessia Gongadze, both believe the case should remain open until the instigators and Gen. Pukach have been arrested.
“Over the five years of the investigation an incalculable number of mistakes and interference have been uncovered," said Reporters Without Borders. “It is appalling that despite repeated official statements a resolution of the case remains as far away as ever. “We would like in particular to remind President Viktor Yushchenko of the promises he made before the press on 1st March 2005 in which he said ’the Gongadze case had been cleared up’ and it was now a case of “following through to the instigators’”. We will not be satisfied just with charges against those who carried out this squalid crime.
We are still waiting for all those responsible, at every level, to be unmasked and punished,” the organization added.
The press and the justice system have uncovered an enormous amount of new information since 3 March this year. The prosecutor’s office revealed that Gongadze was kidnapped and bundled into a car outside his home by three police officers accompanied by Gen. Pukach. It was the general who is believed to have personally strangled the journalist before burying his body in the forest in Tarashcha.
A key witness in the case, former interior minister under President Leonid Kuchma, Yuri Kravchenko, who could have shed new light on the investigation died in mysterious circumstances. He was found dead with two gunshot wounds to the head in an apparent suicide at his country house south of Kiev on 4 March, the day he was due to be interviewed by the prosecutor’s office. Nothing filtered out after the prosecutor-general questioned Kuchma on 10 March, although the former president publicly denied all involvement with the murder.
Relations between the journalist’s family and the new government in Kiev remain rocky. The European Court of Human Rights on 31 March declared as “admissible” a complaint laid by Gongadze’s widow. She had accused the Ukrainian authorities of “failing to investigate the case in a coherent and effective manner” and failing "to protect my husband’s life”. President Yushchenko told Myroslava Gongadze, during a 20 April meeting, that he knew the names of the instigators of her husband’s murder. Myroslava and Lessia Gongadze were allowed to see the case file for the first time in five years on 1st August and on 24 August President Viktor Yushchenko awarded Georgiy Gongadze the title of “Hero of Ukraine”. Myroslava Gongadze said on 9 September that President Yushchenko had no intention of fully clearing up the case. A few days later, Lessia Gongadze’s lawyer said that the results of a fifth DNA test on the body of her son had been inconclusive.
Georgiy Gongadze went missing on the evening of 16 September 2000 and his beheaded and mutilated body was found on 2 November.
In the months before his disappearance, Gongadze had felt himself to be in danger. Security forces kept him under surveillance and he was tailed by unknown people in a car with police number plates. He said he felt in “mortal terror” and in an open letter to Ukraine’s prosecutor-general Mikhailo Potebenko on 14 July 2000 he spoke about a “planned provocation with the objective, at best, of frightening me, and at the worst of stopping me from doing my job”. The threats against him were not taken seriously by the justice system. UNIAN
discuss in forum print version letter to editor This rubrics analytical news archiv Holodomor Exhibition: The Fight To Stay Alive
The Orange Revolution Was a Revolution of Hope. It Was a Serious Commitment
Day and Eternity of James Mace
Ukrainian DPM Sets Out Strong Arguments for More Power to Local Self-Governments
New Sight in Chernobyl's Dead Zone: Tourists
Jak poinformowała we wtorek specjalna komisja parlamentarna na Ukrainie, były prezydent Leonid Kuczma był organizatorem porwania i zamachu na niezależnego dziennikarza Georgija Gongadze we wrześniu 2000 roku.

W związku z tą sprawą Grigorij Omelczenko, który jest szefem komisji śledczej, postanowił wnieść wniosek o odwołanie obecnego przewodniczącego parlamentu Ukrainy - Świetosława Piskuna. Według śledztwa przeprowadzonego przez komisję, mógł mieć wiele wspólnego z organizacją uprowadzenia dziennikarza.

Przeciwko byłemu prezydentowi świadczy także ujawnienie nagrania przez jednego z przywódców opozycji. Taśma przedstawia zlecenie porwania przez prezydenta Ukrainy.

Kuczma zaprzecza tym stwierdzeniom. Mówi, że nagranie na taśmie zostało podrobione, ale nie zaprzecza, że to jest jego głos. Uważa, że wypowiedziane kiedyś przez niego słowa zostały odpowiednio przekształcone. Nawet jeżeli by nie miał racji - na razie nic mu nie grozi. Bowiem decyzja komisji nie ma mocy prawnej. O karaniu może zadecydować jedynie sąd.

''Po pięciu latach śledztwa niezliczona liczba niejasności i pomyłek została wyjaśniona'' - powiedzieli przedstawiciele organizacji Reporterzy Bez Granic. ''To przerażające, że pomimo wielokrotnych, oficjalnych zapowiedzi, sprawa rozwiązania tej sytuacji pozostaje tak samo odległa, jak była od tamtej pory.'' Aby zapobiec takim zdarzeniom, organizacja walcząca o wolność prasy w szczególności zwróci na to uwagę prezydentowi Juszczence podczas staru w nadchodzących, marcowych, wyborów do parlamentu.

W zestawieniu Światowego Wskaźnika Wolności Prasy Ukraina jest klasyfikowana na 138 miejscu na 167 opisanych krajów.

31-letni dziennikarz Georgij Gongadze zaginął 16 września 2000 roku. Jego okaleczone i pozbawione głowy ciało znaleziono 2 listopada tego samego roku.