You're reading: Ukrainska Pravda chief editor questioned in court as witness in Gongadze case

Kyiv’s Pechersky District Court at a meeting on Tuesday, April 24 questioned Olena Prytula, the chief editor of the Ukrainska Pravda online publication, as a witness in the case on the killing of Ukrainian journalist Georgy Gongadze in 2000, Myroslava Gongadze's lawyer, Valentyna Telychenko, has said.

She said that Prytula’s interrogation lasted from 1100 to 1700.

“I can say that [former head of the foreign surveillance department of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry Oleksiy] Pukach adheres to the position adopted earlier, on the basis of what questions he asked the witness, that is, that he committed the murder of the journalist in order to save Ukraine from a ‘dangerous spy’ who posed a threat to the Ukrainian state,” the lawyer said.

Gongadze went missing in Kyiv on September 16, 2000. A decapitated corpse, which experts claimed could be that of Gongadze, was found in a forest outside Kyiv in November 2000. In May 2010, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko stated that fragments of a skull found in July 2009 in Kyiv region belonged to Gongadze. The Prosecutor General’s Office declared that former Ukrainian Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko ordered to murder Gongadze, following the statement the court sent the case for additional investigation. Pukach is accused of having committed the murder.

Pukach, who had long been on the wanted list, was detained in Zhytomyr region on July 21, 2009.