You're reading: President calls for objective probe into all cases linked to Gongadze’s murder, says press secretary

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych wants a thorough and objective probe into all cases related to the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze, his press secretary, Darya Chepak, has said.

"There have recently been several significant developments in the investigation, which seemed impossible a few years ago… The president calls on law enforcement agencies to make the maximum effort to carry out an objective investigation into the criminal cases opened," she told Interfax-Ukraine on Friday.

Chepak said that Yanukovych was confident that the courts should put an end to this case.

"People need to know the truth, although a lot of time has passed since the disappearance of Georgy Gongadze," she said.

Gongadze went missing in Kyiv on Sept.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.

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 Prosecutor General’s Office said on Dec. 6, 2010, that it had completed the investigation into the criminal case against Pukach.

The pre-trial investigation established that on the night from Sept. 16 to Sept. 17, 2000, Oleksiy Pukach, under the instructions of Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko and other officials, [and] in preliminary agreement with a group of persons, committed the premeditated murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze, because the victim was fulfilling public and journalistic duties, the prosecutor’s office said.

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. The Prosecutor General’s Office in February 2007 closed the investigation "in the absence of elements essential to the crime." It claimed Kravchenko had committed suicide.

On Aug. 18, 2011, Pechersky District Court in Kyiv separated the materials concerning Kravchenko from the case against Pukach, on charges of the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze, from, and sent them for further investigation.

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