You're reading: Pukach beating victim Podolsky: Massive cover-up still under way

A statement made by Human rights activist and former journalist Oleksiy Podolsky to General Prosecutor Viktor Pshonka.

Editor’s Note: The following is a Dec. 7 statement from human rights activist and former journalist Oleksiy Podolsky to General Prosecutor Viktor Pshonka. Podolsky was kidnapped, assaulted, choked and ordered to dig his own grave by former Interior Ministry General Oleksiy Pukach on June 9, 2000, just three months before the murder of another journalist, Georgiy Gongadze. Podolsky believes he was singled out for attack because of his human rights activities critical of the regime of ex-President Leonid Kuchma, whose authoritarian rule last from 1994-2005. During the assault, Pukach and other officers told him to stop writing critical articles about Kuchma. The so-called “Melnychenko tapes ”include alleged recordings of Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko reporting to ex-President Leonid Kuchma about the Podolsky beating.

I am found to be a victim in the case that has been supposedly investigated by the General Prosecutor of Ukraine regarding crimes of [Interior Ministry] Lieutenant General Oleksiy Pukach and other officials of Ukraine, which were committed in 2000 against Georgiy Gongadze and against me personally.

Today, December 7, 2010, your subordinate investigator V.A. Gryshchenko in fact told me without any explanation that the General Prosecutor’s Office refuses to let me review the files of the case in which I am recognized as a victim.

The investigation deliberately and consistently avoids the investigation of fraud that was done in the Gongadze case and, in my case, the General Prosecutor’s Office under the direction of [Mykhailo] Potebenko, [Gennadiy] Vasylyev, [Svyatoslav] Piskun, and [Oleksandr] Medvedko, because such an investigation will lead to those who are true criminals. They are those who ordered the murder of political-ideological opponents, and then gave orders to prosecutors to conceal it.”

– Oleksiy Podolsky, human rights activist and former journalist.

Therefore, I formally appeal to you … about the blatant violation of my constitutional rights by your employees.

Also ask you to note that the investigation in this case actually turned into protection of those who ordered Georgiy Gongadze’s murder and the crime against me.

This keeps your subordinates acting on behalf of the general prosecutor not only as the exclusive law firm for those who ordered political assassinations, but also, in fact, themselves resort to violations of law where an intentional criminal act is clearly seen.

In particular, the investigation stubbornly refuses to see direct evidence of murder of a witness in this case – [Interior] Minister [Yuriy] Kravchenko [who died of two gunshot wounds to the head on March 4, 2005], which is included in the materials on this so-called suicide.

Thus, they do their utmost for the murderers, the investigators and prosecutors who knowingly and intentionally falsified conclusions on the suicide, or those who ordered the murder and these falsifications … so that they don’t face trial.

Similarly, the investigation deliberately and consistently avoids the investigation of fraud that was done in the Gongadze case and, in my case, the General Prosecutor’s Office under the direction of [Mykhailo] Potebenko, [Gennadiy] Vasylyev, [Svyatoslav] Piskun, and [Oleksandr] Medvedko, because such an investigation will lead to those who are true criminals.

They are those who ordered the murder of political-ideological opponents, and then gave orders to prosecutors to conceal it.

Whether your name stands by your predecessors now depends on you.

Read also ‘Did Kuchma, Lytvyn order murder of Gongadze?