21 years have passed since the kidnapping of the journalist.
On September 16, 2000, the Ukrainian journalist Georgy Gongadze was abducted. On November 2, his decapitated body was found in the Tarashchansky forest. The perpetrators of the crime were punished, but the law enforcement officers did not find the customers even 21 years later. In fact, Gongadze was speculated by the presidents, heads of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the General Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine, but when they finally put an end to it, reports with reference to.
They dealt with this with Valentina Telichenko , a human rights activist and representative of the wife of the murdered journalist Miroslava Gongadze. Read on to find out how the case against those who ordered the murder is being investigated and what is the role of the international community in this process.
How Georgy Gongadze was killed
- On September 17, 2000, Ukrainian journalist Georgy Gongadze was killed by police officers Aleksey Pukach, Nikolai Protasov, Valery Kostenko and Aleksandr Popovich after being abducted the previous day.
- It happened in a forest near the village of Sukholesy in the Kiev region. The killers carried the journalist into a dug hole and laid him face down. Pukach stuffed a handkerchief into Gongadze's mouth and squeezed his throat and neck with his hands, and Protasov held Georgy by the shoulders.
- A little later, Popovich pulled the belt out of Gongadze's trousers and handed it to Pukach. The latter threw it around Gongadze's neck, put his knees on the chest and began to tighten. Then Popovich struck several blows in the stomach to force the journalist to breathe out his air.
- As a result of squeezing his neck with a loop from a belt, Gongadze broke his Adam's apple. The journalist began to convulse. Protasov and Kostenko held Gongadze by the legs until his death. Then they doused the body with gasoline and set it on fire, and then threw earth into the hole with the body and camouflaged it with grass.
- In October 2000, Pukach dug up the journalist's body and took him to the Tarashchansky forest (15 kilometers from the murder site), where he detached his head with an ax and then buried it and the body separately.
In search of those who ordered the murder
On July 2, 2021, the Supreme Court approved life imprisonment for the murder of a media worker for ex-Interior Ministry official Alexei Pukach. According to the law, his defense can still file a complaint against the sentence with the European Court of Human Rights. However, Mrs. Telichenko is sure that she will not be satisfied.
The Supreme Court upheld a life sentence for the executor. But I do not see that the investigation is moving even a little in search of customers. There are no changes under the current government. We have serious problems with the law enforcement system,
— said the human rights activist.
It is not the first year that a lot of attention of the public, journalists and the world community has been riveted to the Gongadze case. For example, on July 3, 2021, the US Embassy called on Ukrainian Prosecutor General Irina Venediktova to ensure a full investigation into the murder of a journalist. At the same time, the representative of Miroslava Gongadze does not see any progress.
In 2019, at a press conference, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that he «does not know at what stage this case is now.» The guarantor added that the issue of «ending the war» is a priority for him today. Ms. Telichenko is outraged by such statements. In her opinion, «war and murder investigation cannot be opposed.»
If there is a war going on in our country, this does not exempt law enforcement officers from work,
— she emphasized.
The human rights activist added that impunity leads to new crimes. Of the most resonant — the murder of journalist Pavel Sheremet and activist Yekaterina Gandzyuk.
Political speculations on the Gongadze case
I don't like it when they say that nothing has changed in 21 years. But we still don't know the names of the customers. Journalists cannot feel safe with such a law enforcement system,
— said Valentina Telichenko.
Many Ukrainian politicians speculated on the Gongadze case during and after the Ukraine Without Kuchma protest campaign.
It is difficult to predict whether the investigation into the instigators of the murder of the Ukrainian journalist will be able to reach the final point.
Ex-Interior Ministry official Alexey Pukach, convicted of the murder of Gongadze, claimed that he was in cahoots with ex-President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma, former head of the Presidential Administration Volodymyr Lytvyn and ex-Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko.
According to Pukach, it was the former interior minister who ordered him to kidnap and kill Gongadze . There is also a version that the ordering party for the murder was the Russian special services.
Valentina Telichenko noted that in accordance with paragraph 4 of Art. 49 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, those who ordered the murder will not be able to free themselves from criminal liability even due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. The main thing is to find them and prove their guilt.
Key dates in the Gongadze case
- On September 16, 2000, journalist Georgy Gongadze was kidnapped on his way home.
- On November 2, 2000, his decapitated body was found in a shallow pit in the Tarashchansky forest, about 100 kilometers from Kiev. However, only on September 3, 2002, the Prosecutor General's Office admitted that the found body belonged to a journalist.
- On November 28, 2000, the then head of the Socialist Party, Alexander Moroz, released the recordings of conversations about planning the murder of a journalist. They featured: the then President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma, the head of the Presidential Administration Volodymyr Lytvyn, the Minister of Internal Affairs Yuriy Kravchenko and the head of the SBU Leonid Derkach. We are talking about the «Melnichenko tapes» from which the cassette scandal began.
- On February 27, 2001, the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine opened a case under the article «Intentional Murder», and on May 16, the then head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Yuriy Smirnov announced that Gongadze had been killed «out of hooligan motives.»
- On October 22, 2003, then Prosecutor General Svyatoslav Piskun signed a warrant for the arrest of the head of the Department of External Surveillance of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Police General Alexei Pukach. A few days later, Kuchma fired Piskun and his deputy, Viktor Shokin. Subsequently, the investigation team was reorganized, and Pukach was released.
- During the Orange Revolution, Piskun appealed his dismissal and reopened the investigation. A little later, the SBU put Pukach on the wanted list, in which he was until July 21, 2009.
- On March 4, 2005, ex-Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko, who was the main witness in the case, was found dead at his dacha in Koncha-Zaspa near Kiev. He died from two gunshot wounds to the head. According to the official version, the ex-minister committed suicide.
- On November 23, 2005, the Kiev Court of Appeal began closed-door consideration of the case on charges of Nikolai Protasov, Valery Kostenko and Alexander Popovich in the premeditated murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze.
- On March 15, 2008, the Kiev Court of Appeal sentenced Protasov to 13 years in prison, and Kostenko and Popovich to 12 years in prison.
- On July 22, 2009, Pukach admitted his involvement in the murder of Georgy Gongadze and named the customers. Among them are Leonid Kuchma, Vladimir Litvin and Yuri Kravchenko.
- On March 22, 2011, a criminal case was opened against Leonid Kuchma on suspicion of involvement in the murder of Gongadze. In December of the same year, the decision of the Prosecutor General's Office to initiate a criminal case against Kuchma was canceled.
- On January 29, 2013, Pukach was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Georgy Gongadze.
- On March 22, 2016, Gongadze was buried in the courtyard of the Church of Nikolai Naberezhny on Podol in Kiev.
What is known about the Gongadze family
Georgy Gongadze with his daughters Nana and Solomiya / Photo from the personal archive of Georgy Gongadze
The wife of the journalist Miroslav Gongadze was granted political asylum in the United States in 2001. Since 2004 he has been working for the Voice of America in Washington. Now the media woman is the head of the Ukrainian service of the TV and radio company. The deceased journalist has twin daughters Solomiya and Nana. Now they are 24 years old.