Georgiy Gongadze

During the Cassette Scandal, audiotapes were released on which Kuchma, Volodymyr Lytvyn and other top-level administration officials are heard discussing the need to silence Gongadze for his online news reports about high-level corruption.Former Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko died of two gunshot wounds to the head on 4 March 2005, just hours before he was to begin providing testimony as a witness in the case.In 1989 and 1990, Georgiy travelled to the Baltic states and Ukraine in an attempt to drum up foreign support for Georgia's independence from the Soviet Union.In December 1991, a civil war ensued when government forces opened fire upon anti-Gamsakhurdia protestors in Tbilisi, while a militia armed by the oppositional parties counter-attacked.The two of them wrote an article titled "Tragedy of Leaders" (Ukrainian: Трагедія лідерів) about the Georgian Civil War, which was published in the Lviv newspaper Post-Postup in 1992.Gongadze received a camera from his mother, and filmed a documentary about the Georgian Civil War, entitled The Pain of My Land (Ukrainian: Біль моєї землі).The UNA-UNSO, with its self-stated goal of "exiling communists and criminals from Ukraine and overpowering Russian expansionism," coincided with those of Georgian nationalists fighting Russian-backed separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.[7] By the time filming began, Russian-backed Abkhazian separatists had taken much of the lands they sought to control, and had encircled the region's administrative centre, Sukhumi.Upon arrival, he was mobilised for service in the Defense Forces of Georgia, and the following morning was at the frontlines along the Gumista River, where Abkhazian troops were conducting an assault.The Russian-edited, Russian-language Ukrainian newspaper Segodnya ("Today") reported that Gongadze had been abducted by policemen and accidentally shot in the head while seated in a vehicle, necessitating his decapitation (to avoid the bullet being recovered and matched to a police weapon).On 28 November 2000, opposition politician Oleksandr Moroz publicised secret tape recordings which he claimed implicated Kuchma in Gongadze's murder.The conversations included comments expressing annoyance at Gongadze's writings as well as discussions of ways to shut him up, such as deporting him and arranging for him to be kidnapped and taken to Chechnya."[citation needed] In September 2001, the American detective agency Kroll Inc., contracted by the pro-Kuchma political party Labour Ukraine, carried out a six-month investigation and concluded that Kuchma had nothing to do with the murder of Gongadze.[19][20] In May 2001, Interior Minister Yuriy Smirnov announced that the murder had been solved—it was attributed to a random act of violence committed by two "hooligans" with links to a gangster called "Cyclops".[23] Gongadze's death became a major issue in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, in which the opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko pledged to solve the case if he became president.[citation needed] The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly adopted on 27 January 2009 Resolution 1645 on the investigation of crimes allegedly committed by high officials during the Kuchma rule in Ukraine – the Gongadze case as an emblematic example.This Resolution calls on the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office to use all possible avenues of investigation to identify those who instigated and organised the murder of Giorgiy Gongadze.[25] Prosecutor-General Svyatoslav Piskun announced the following day that the case had been solved, telling Ukrainian television that Gongadze had been strangled by employees of the Interior Ministry.The two police colonels accused of the killing have been detained and a third senior policeman, identified as CID commander Oleksiy Pukach, was being sought on an international arrest warrant.He told the press that after Gongadze was murdered, a second group disinterred him and re-buried him where he was eventually found, in the constituency of Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz.[27][28] The former chief of the main criminal investigation department at the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's foreign surveillance unit[3] had lived in the house of Lidia Zagorulko who had told her neighbours that Pukach was the brother of her dead husband and that he was a former sea captain.[30] At first it was reported and that he had implicated senior political figures in the murder[31] and was ready to show the place where the journalist's head was hidden, but this was denied two days after his arrest by his lawyer.[4][34] A request by Myroslava Gongadze to replace deputy prosecutor general Mykola Holomsha and investigator Oleksandr Kharchenko because of their insufficient professionalism and because they were unable to withstand political pressure and speculation surrounding the case was rejected on 30 July 2009.[42][43] Ukrainian Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko stated on 17 June 2010 that skull fragments found near Bila Tserkva in July 2009 were those of Gongadze.[49] In December 2011, the Pechersk District Court refused to accept witness testimony of Mykola Melnychenko as he had not been authorised to gather evidence of a crime, while conducting recordings in a cabinet of the President of Ukraine.[52] Telychenko blamed former First Deputy Prosecutor-General Renat Kuzmin for "speculating with the Gongadze case" that according to her led to "exhausting Pukach's length of stay in detention during the preliminary investigation".Former Prime Minister and the opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko argued that Kuchma's arrest was no more than a PR stunt designed to distract people from their economic woes and prop up President Viktor Yanukovych's sagging popularity.[54] A Ukrainian district court ordered prosecutors to drop criminal charges against Kuchma on 14 December 2011 on grounds that evidence linking him to the murder of Gongadze was insufficient.[56][57] First Deputy Prosecutor-General Renat Kuzmin claimed 20 February 2013 that his office had collected enough evidence confirming Kuchma's responsibility for ordering Gongadze's assassination.[44] A literary token of respect for the work and courage of Gongadze is to be found in the novel for young adults, "Fair Game: The Steps of Odessa" (Spire Publishing, 2008, ISBN 1-897312-72-5) by James Watson.