Valentyna Telychenko, the lawyer for Georgy Gongadze's widow, Myroslava Gongadze, has supported the prosecutor's opinion that the former chief of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's external surveillance department, Oleksiy Pukach, should be sentenced to life imprisonment. Verdict to Pukach to be announced in open regive on January 29.
“The state prosecutor, while speaking during the debates, asked for very
serious and very significant punishment for a crime incriminated to Oleksiy
Pukach – from 8 to 12 years in prison under articles that do not envisage murder
and life sentence for murder. I share this point of view. I think that Pukach
should be given the most severe punishment,” Telychenko told reporters after a
court session on Thursday.
“The indictment clearly states that Pukach performed the orders of [former
Interior Minister Yuriy] Kravchenko and other senior officials,” she added.
Telychenko said that at the court hearing it was absolutely clear that Pukach
“shows no repentance, but, quite the contrary, tries to find a loophole through
which his guilt would be less serious, and the murder would not be
premeditated,” she said.
The lawyer said that there was a very important issue, in which she does not
agree with the state prosecutor: “This is a question of whether there was a
contract killing. That is, this concerns the motives of the murder.”
“In our case, the motive is what determines the charges against the
defendant… The indictment clearly indicates, as a motive, that Pukach
performed the criminal orders of Interior Minister Kravchenko and other senior
officials, and this motive was clearly stated,” she said.
Telychenko said she was bewildered that Pukach was not charged with a
contract killing. She recalled that the pre-trial investigation found no
connection between career development of Pukach and the fact that he committed
this crime, but in the court proceedings, she said, the court had not questioned
witnesses directly pointed by Pukach, from whom he received a criminal order.
The lawyer also said that the issue concerns those who are currently alive,
because ex-Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko is already dead.
