The ongoing murder trial against former police general Oleksiy Pukach, accused of killing journalist Georgiy Gongadze on Sept. 16, 2000, is a state secret. How did it happen?

Technically it was done like this: The prosecutor petitioned the court to close the hearing to the public.

The judge agreed to make all testimony and evidence on the Sept. 16, 2000, murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze unavailable to public.

This ruling came despite protests from the aggrieved party, in this case, the victim’s widow, Myroslava Gongadze.

The reason behind the decision sounded impressive: It involves a state secret.

It turns out that this important secret is how the state trails its citizens, how it kidnaps them, tortures them in the depth of a forest, then kills them and buries them in a shallow grave. It turns out that if this terrible state secret becomes public, it will be to the detriment of the state.

Of course, this official nonsense does not convince anyone. But the problem is that nobody can do anything about it – the court has ruled so, and the Ukrainian presidents, first Viktor Yushchenko and now Viktor Yanukovych, just shrug their shoulders helplessly, pretending that the nation has an independent judiciary. “I myself would very much like to know the whole truth about the Gongadze case,” said Yanukovych recently.

I would like to help the president, so here I go. This is what the law says: Special Article 20 of the Criminal and Procedural Code, approved in 1962, refers to the “publicity of court hearings.”

According to this article, “all court hearings are public, with the exception of cases that contradict the interests of guarding a state or another legally protected secret.”

The law on state secrets lists these exceptions by categories in detail. Here we can find the one that the prosecutor originally cited in his petition, the secret “in the sphere of state security and protection of law and order.”

It says that, among other things, information about the staff involved in investigative and search operations, about the means, content, plans, structure, finances and equipment involved in search and investigative operations, as well as they methods, forms, and results is secret.

So, what has it all got to do with Gongadze? Was he a criminal? Was there a legal search and investigative operation conducted against him? Of course not.

Pukach and his subordinates, as well as those who gave them orders from the highest seats in power, are accused of committing a crime. All of them acted beyond their official duties and conducted actions that fall under several articles of the criminal code, including Article 365. Three of Pukach’s subordinates have already been convicted for their roles in the murder of Gongadze and are serving prison sentences.

The law on state secrets has a provision that talks specifically about this type of a case. This is what it says: “Cannot belong to state secret information… containing facts about violation of rights and freedoms of a citizen; about illegal actions of the state organs.”

So, Mr. Prosecutor and Ms. Judge: How can you explain that? Even if you did badly at school, you still can and should read this article of the relevant law.

It’s true that nobody should interfere with justice. But if our president, who also happens to be the guarantor of the Constitution and our rights, modestly pointed out to prosecutor general that the earlier petition is illegal, who would condemn the president? Most likely, as a result, the prosecutor would call off his petition, and the judge would cancel her dubious decision.

This would not bring back the dead, but at least we would be one step closer to the truth.

Viktor Nikazakov is a prominent Ukrainian lawyer. He can be reached at [email protected].