You're reading: Сonviction of Pukach should not be final in journalist Gongadze murder trial, says widow

Myroslava Gongadze, the widow of Ukrainian journalist Georgy Gongadze killed in 2000, believes the proceedings concerning her husband's murder will be completed after not only those who actually committed the murder, but also those who ordered it have been punished.

Earlier on Tuesday, Kyiv’s Pechersky District Court found former chief of the external surveillance department of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, Oleksiy Pukach, guilty of killing Gongadze and sentenced him to life in prison. The court also stripped Pukach of his lieutenant general rank and obliged him to pay UAH 500,000 to Myroslava Gongadze and UAH 100,000 to journalist Oleksiy Podolsky.

“This court ruling is definitely not final for me. The punishment of not only the killers themselves, but also those who ordered the killing can be final,” Myroslava Gongadze said on ICTV television in commenting on Pukach’s conviction.

Judge Andriy Melnyk asked Pukach after pronouncing the sentence whether he understands it, to which Pukach replied, “I will understand the sentence when [former Ukrainian President Leonid] Kuchma and [former presidential chief of staff Volodymyr] Lytvyn are also put in jail together with me.”

Journalist Gongadze, the founder of the Internet publication Ukrainska Pravda (Ukrainian Truth), disappeared in Kyiv on September 16, 2000. A beheaded body was found in a forest outside Kyiv in November 2000, and experts concluded preliminarily that it could have been Gongadze’s. Remains of a skull were found in Kyiv region in 2009, and the Prosecutor General’s Office concluded that they were Gongadze’s. The body, however, has still not been buried, as the journalist’s mother, Lesia Gongadze, is refusing to recognize the remains as her son’s.