You're reading: Court to continue consideration of Pukach case on July 18

Pechersky District Court of Kyiv will continue the consideration of a criminal case opened against Oleksiy Pukach, the former head of the foreign surveillance department of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, who is charged with the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze, at 1000 on July 18, Valentyna Telychenko, the lawyer for the journalist's widow, Myroslava Gongadze, has said.

"The point was that [journalist Oleksandr] Podolsky still has no access to state secrets. In fact, the court decided to announce a break in order to organize this access by 1000 on July 18," she told reporters after a court session on Thursday.

In June 2000, Interior Ministry employees took journalist Oleksandr Podolsky and Gongadze to a forest in order to intimidate them.

"From the very beginning of hearings, I was obliged to demand the withdrawal of the presiding judge due to the fact that at the preliminary hearings of a criminal case he did not resolve the question of transferring Pukach to a place determined by law for those who are in custody," she said.

Telychenko noted that the inexperience of the judges would lead to the trial being a long-lasting one.

"All of the judges from the panel appear to be very young," she said.

Telychenko noted that the panel of judges had rejected her request to withdraw them.

She also said she was indignant at the fact that Pukach was sitting next to his lawyer in the courtroom, rather than in the cage for the accused.

"Pukach was not in the special place for those who are in custody," she said.

She said that several minutes before the beginning of the court session, the secretary asked Pukach to enter the cage.

Gongadze went missing in Kyiv on September 16, 2000.

A decapitated corpse, which experts have 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.

On November 28, 2000, Ukrainian Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz published a transcript of several tapes pointing to the involvement of then Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma and other officials in a number of high-profile crimes, including the Gongadze murder.

The tapes also contained evidence of pressure being put on other Ukrainian politicians and journalists.

On March 4, 2005 ex-Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko was found dead in his home at Koncha-Zaspa outside Kyiv with two gunshot wounds in his head.

A day earlier, he had been questioned as part of the inquiry into the Gongadze murder.

In 2008, three former officers from the Ukrainian Interior Ministry External Surveillance and Criminal Intelligence Department, Col. Valeriy Kostenko, Col. Mykola Protasov, and Maj. Oleksandr Popovych, were found guilty of killing Gongadze.

Former head of the Interior Ministry’s External Surveillance Department Oleksiy Pukach, another suspect in the case, was detained in the Zhytomyr region on July 21, 2009.

The criminal case against Kuchma for his involvement in the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze was opened on March 21, 2011.

The second Ukrainian president is charged with exceeding his authority and giving unlawful instructions to Interior Ministry officials, which subsequently led to Gongadze’s murder.

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