The main strategy for the defense of second Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma on charges of his being involved in the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze will be based on the fact that the tapes recorded by former State Guard Department officer Mykola Melnychenko are not authentic and that they should not be recognized as material evidence, U.S. lawyer Alan Dershowitz has said.
"Our main argument is that the tapes are not authentic. And one of the reasons for their being inauthentic is the way in which they were made. They were made by a man [Melnychenko] who then tried to sell them, and he decided what should be left and what should be deleted. It’s obvious that he could very easily change the tapes so that what was advantageous to him remained on them," he said in an interview with the Kommersant Ukraine newspaper published on Monday.
"So here there is a correlation between the fact that these tapes were obtained illegally, and their authenticity," the lawyer said.
When asked whether the defense will insist on some sort of investigation, Dershowitz said: "Yes. I cannot reveal secrets, but I’ll note that our experts, who are world-famous people, should get access to the evidence – the memory cards, chips, and recording devices with which the investigators worked."
He said that it was impossible to determine how authentic the Melnychenko tapes were. In this connection, he referred to a conclusion made by the Kyiv Research Institute of Forensic Expertise.
"We have a collection of materials, which sets out our concerns and evidence that in this case it is impossible to make reliable conclusions about the authenticity of the recordings. It also contains the conclusion made by the Kyiv Research Institute of Forensic Expertise. And the conclusions of the institute are as follows: it’s impossible to establish definitively that the records are authentic," the lawyer said.
He said that a lot of Ukrainian citizens had been jailed on the basis of the findings made by the institute’s experts.
"Nevertheless, the current prosecutor simply rejected the report of the institute. Does that mean it’s necessary to free all of these prisoners? How could the investigators throw into question the conclusions of the institute, whose conclusions the prosecutor’s office used earlier to put people in jail? It’s unfair not only with respect to President Kuchma, but also with respect to those who have already received prison terms," he said.
Dershowitz also said that he was part of Kuchma’s legal team.
"My main role is to be a consultant and expert for Ukrainian lawyers so as to develop a strategy. I was hired as a legal expert, rather than a public relations expert," he said.
When asked who pays for his services, the lawyer said that this was confidential information.
