| Viktor Yushchenko announced the arrest of possible killers of Georgy Gongadze Yesterday, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko announced the sensational discovery of the case of the murder of opposition journalist Georgy Gongadze. The journalist disappeared on September 16, 2000 in Kyiv. A month later, a headless body was found in the Tarashchansky forest near Kyiv, which the examination recognized as the body of Gongadze. For four years now, Ukraine has been in a fever from the loud political scandal that followed this murder.
“The government was a shelter for the murderers,” so “the murder was not solved for four years,” Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said yesterday at an emergency press conference. Now in Ukraine, according to the president, “everyone is equal before the law.” Yushchenko said: “So I will be able to tell my children who, when and how killed Gongadze.”
A few months before his death, Gongadze contacted the Prosecutor General’s Office with an open letter in which he reported that the police were watching him. In December 2000, the leader of the Socialist Party, Alexander Moroz, accused then President Leonid Kuchma of the murder of Gongadze. As evidence, Mr. Moroz presented recordings made by Major of the Presidential Guard Nikolai Melnichenko in the President's office. In these recordings, Leonid Kuchma allegedly gave orders to the former head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Yuri Kravchenko, to kidnap the journalist.
The head of the parliamentary group “Democratic Ukraine”, where there are many of Kuchma’s associates, Igor Sharov believes that Yushchenko’s statement about solving the Gongadze case “is a big positive.” However, he emphasized: “As a politician and a citizen, I cannot be satisfied with abstract statements that the previous government was a “roof” for murderers. I think the president will soon specify what he meant.” Yushchenko “must become a guarantor of preventing speculation around this investigation,” Mr. Sharov believes.
During his recent trip to Europe, Viktor Yushchenko expressed doubts about the quick resolution of the Gongadze case. They say that out of four witnesses there are only two left, and a lot of time has passed. The subsequent lightning-fast resolution of the case makes one wonder: is this not a tribute to the political situation? After all, the capture of the killers and those who ordered the murder of Georgy Gongadze is not only a blow to representatives of the previous government, but also one of the conditions of Washington and Brussels on Ukraine’s path to full membership in the European Union.
“Yushchenko’s statement about solving the Gongadze case is by no means an opportunistic situation,” Ukrainian political scientist Dmitry Vydrin told Vremya Novostey. According to Mr. Vydrin, the main executor may be arrested any moment. The expert believes that there is a high probability that ex-President Leonid Kuchma will also be brought to justice, since “the degree of reliability of Melnichenko’s films is very high.”
President Yushchenko confirmed that “last night the participants in the murder were detained” and now “the investigation will closely search for the organizers and masterminds.” The president did not name the names of those arrested, but said that the killers testified “how the journalist spent the last day of his life.” His dying hours, according to Yushchenko, were “terrible” and “in their cruelty, unworthy even of the Middle Ages.” “It was hard to believe that civil servants could have such anger and such an animal attitude towards their fellow citizens,” the Ukrainian president said.
According to unofficial data, on the night of March 1, three representatives of law enforcement agencies, called “direct participants in the murder,” were detained. They were not the perpetrators, but “were present at the murder.” According to information reported by a number of Ukrainian media, the list allegedly includes Major General of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Nikolai Astion, who previously headed the Organized Crime Control Department of Kyiv, as well as colonels of external surveillance of the capital’s Ministry of Internal Affairs Protash and Gudzenko. According to information from the former editor of the online publication “Criminal Ukraine” Oleg Eltsov, it was on the basis of their testimony that a terrible piece of evidence was found in one of the Dnieper bays - Gongadze’s head. Yesterday, the SBU press service denied this information, but promised to provide details today.
A version has emerged that the key to solving the murder of Gongadze were letters from the former deputy head of the Organized Crime Control Department of the Kyiv region, Igor Goncharov, as well as the films of Nikolai Melnichenko. In Goncharov's letters, Gongadze's killers were named. Goncharov was arrested and then died suddenly in a pre-trial detention center from a spinal injury in August 2003. The Prosecutor General's Office accused him of organizing a “gang of werewolves” of former and current police officers who committed 11 murders. After Goncharov’s death, the Institute of Mass Information received his letters, in which Goncharov claimed that employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were direct participants in the kidnapping of the journalist.
In particular, according to Goncharov, General Astion ordered the Kyiv Organized Crime Control unit to kidnap Gongadze after the order of the then head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Yuri Kravchenko. Goncharov’s letters allegedly also mention Yuri Nesterov, a former employee of the Organized Crime Control Department and a member of the “gang of werewolves,” as one of the kidnappers. According to Channel Five, controlled by the Secretary of the National Security Council of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, Nesterov, who was detained as a witness in the Gongadze case, was attacked on February 28, after which he miraculously survived. Goncharov's letters were recognized as authentic and added to the Gongadze case. However, on February 28, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Gennady Moskal said that the cases of Gongadze and the “gang of werewolves” are not related.
As Georgy Manchulenko, secretary of the Rada Committee on National Security and Defense, told Vremya Novostey, “a massive search is now underway for all the people involved in the murder and abduction of Georgy Gongadze.” According to Manchulenko, “these are those who appear in Major Melnichenko’s notes and Goncharov’s letters, in particular, General of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Pukach, who was in charge of external surveillance, and other characters.” Manchulenko does not rule out that the list of people wanted by law enforcement agencies “also included former head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Yuri Kravchenko and ex-President Leonid Kuchma.” Svetlana STEPANENKO, Kyiv |
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