You're reading: Trial watchers: Pukach says Kuchma gave order to kill

A key suspect in the 2000 slaying of journalist Georgiy Gongadze testified on Aug. 30 that he carried out the brutal killing in a plot orchestrated by former President Leonid Kuchma and other top officials, according to two persons allowed inside the closed trial.

A key suspect in the 2000 slaying of journalist Georgiy Gongadze testified on Aug. 30 that he carried out the brutal killing in a plot orchestrated by former President Leonid Kuchma and other top officials, according to two persons allowed inside the closed trial.

Olexiy Pukach, a former senior police official charged with killing Gongadze nearly 11 years ago, testified that Kuchma ordered the slaying together with other top officials, according to Valentyna Telychenko, a lawyer representing Gongadze’s widow, Myroslava.

Oleksiy Podolsky, a former colleague of Gongadze’s who also attended the trial, was also quoted by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as saying that Pukach “clearly named former President Leonid Kuchma and former Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko as having ordered the murder.”

President from 1994 through 2005, Kuchma has repeatedly denied all such accusations. His office declined to comment on Aug. 30. The Daily Telegraph in London quoted Kuchma’s lawyer, Viktor Petrunenko, as saying that Pukach is not credible.

Clearly named former President Leonid Kuchma and former Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko as having ordered the murder.

Oleksiy Podolsky, a former colleague of Gongadze’s

“His motive for slander is obvious,” Petrunenko said.

“It is to cast himself as an unthinking individual without his own free will who carried out somebody else’s orders so that he can avoid harsh punishment such as life imprisonment.”

Fresh denials of involvement in Gongadze’s murder also came from Parliament speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, then Kuchma’s chief of staff, and former deputy interior minister Mykhailo Dzhiha, now the governor of Vinnytsia Oblast.

Both have been implicated in the plot to kill Gongadze.
The trial is closed to the public so the accounts of Telychenko and Podolsky could not be confirmed.

In a related investigation, Kuchma was indicted in March on abuse-of-office charges in Gongadze’s death. Prosecutors suspect he gave illegal orders to his subordinates that eventually led to Gongadze’s death.

Pukach’s superior, Kravchenko, was found dead in his summer house near Kyiv on March 4, 2005, from two gunshot wounds to the head. The official cause of death was said to be suicide.

Authorities have publicly identified him as a conspirator in the murder.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports that Telychenko said that Pukach testified to killing Gongadze because the victim and two associates had been preparing “since 1997 to seize power in Ukraine illegally, and so I killed him to save the country.”

Pukach is the former head of the Main Criminal Investigation Department at the Interior Ministry’s foreign surveillance unit.

His three subordinates – Valeriy Kostenko, Mykola Protasov and Oleksandr Popovych – were convicted in March 2008 and sentenced to 12-13 years in prison.

Pukach went into hiding from 2003, until police found him in rural Zhytomyr Oblast on July 21, 2009.

Gongadze, who wrote about corruption among Ukraine’s political elite, was kidnapped on Sept. 16, 2000. His decapitated body was found outside Kyiv several months later.

The murder sparked months of protests against Kuchma after a key witness released tape recordings in which a voice that sounded like Kuchma’s is heard complaining about the journalist and suggesting subordinates deal with the problem.

The criminal investigation against Kuchma, 73, was initiated unexpectedly in March. Kuchma had been questioned in the case in the past but not as a suspect.

Meanwhile, the secrecy of the Pukach trial came under sharp attack.

By sealing the trial on allegations of state secrets’ protection, the court violates my plaintiff rights.

– Myroslava Gongadze, Georgiy Gongadze’s widow

Andriy Fedur, the lawyer of Gongadze’s mother, Lesya Gongadze, told journalists he was convinced Pukach’s trial is being held behind closed doors to ensure that his testimony does not become common knowledge.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists also on Aug. 31 criticized the court for closing the proceedings on grounds of protecting state secrets.

The court has denied three requests by Telychenko to open the trial to the public.

In an interview with the Committee to Protect Journalists, Myroslava Gongadze again called for the unsealing of the indictments and proceedings.

“By sealing the trial on allegations of state secrets’ protection, the court violates my plaintiff rights,” she said. She appealed to the European Court of Human Rights for help in opening the trial to the public.

The murder of Gongadze became a leading symbol of the lawlessness of the Kuchma era, while the drawn-out battle for justice is seen as a litmus test of Ukrainian democracy.