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A plaque at the end of Kyiv’s main street, Khreshchatyk, lists all the Ukrainian journalists killed since Ukraine gained independence in 1991. Ihor Eros The ability of Ukraine’s authorities to protect freedom of speech and guarantee justice is as much an issue as ever. Five men were sentenced to prison terms on July 7 for the 2001 killing of Ihor Oleksandrov, a Donetsk-based television journalist who had been airing reports on the link between organized crime and the police. Nevertheless, neither the Prosecutor-General’s Office, trial observers nor Oleksandrov’s widow have welcomed the sentence

en airing reports on the link between organized crime and the police.

Nevertheless, neither the Prosecutor-General’s Office, trial observers nor Oleksandrov’s widow have welcomed the sentence.

Gongadze, 32, was found mutilated in a rural area outside Kyiv in late 2000. He had also been reporting on high-level corruption, and the outrage over his murder culminated in anti-presidential protests in early 2001. Oleksandrov, 45, died on July 7, 2001 of head injuries, four days after he’d been beaten with baseball bats outside the entrance to his work place in the town of Slovyansk, Donetsk Region.

Five years to the day of Oleksandrov’s death, the Luhansk Region Court of Appeals reported the sentencing of brothers Oleksandr and Dmytro Rybak to 15 and 11 years in prison, respectively, for ordering and planning the murder. In addition, Oleksandr Onyshko was sentenced to 12 years, and Ruslan Tursunov to six years for carrying out the killing; while Serhiy Koritsky received a 30 month sentence as an accomplice.

The five men were sentenced along with seven other members of an alleged gang for eleven different crimes. They were charged in March 2004, and their trial began in September that same year.

Since then, Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Oleksandr Medvedko has criticized the court’s decision.

“The Prosecutor-General’s Office (PGO) doesn’t agree with such a sentence. We are preparing our response regarding the person who ordered the murder, who is also accused of committing other serious crimes,” Medvedko was reported as saying by the Ukrainian News news agency during a PGO meeting in Kyiv on July 21.

According to PGO spokesman Aleksey Bebel, the PGO is going to challenge the July 7 sentence, which it believes to be too light.

Viktoriya Syumar, president of the Institute of Media Information Chief, a Kyiv-based media watchdog, is critical of the trial as well as the sentences.

“There were many controversial points during the trial of the Rybak brothers, Oleksandr and Dmytro. Our correspondents were present at the proceedings and followed the case closely. The motive of the Rybak brothers is still unclear. It was really convenient for certain figures to add another crime, such as the murder of a journalist, to a long list of prior offences committed by the defendants,” she told the Kyiv Post on July 25.

According to Syumar, the Rybak brothers initially admitted to killing Oleksandrov but then withdrew their confessions.

According to Yevhen Zakharov, co-chairman of the Kharkiv Human-Rights Group, justice has not yet been served.

“The story is not officially over yet. There was enough proof to convict the Rybak brothers, and even Ihor Oleksandrov’s widow Lyudmyla does not object to that, but what many people find unfair is the two-and-a-half-year sentence, instead of the six years demanded by the prosecution,” he told the Post on July 25.

If the recent sentences are challenged, it won’t be the first time that the five-year-old murder case has experienced a setback.

On May 17 2002, the Supreme Court upheld the acquittal of Donetsk law-enforcement agencies’ original suspect in the 2001 death of Oleksandrov, Yury Veredyuk, a 46-year-old homeless man who suffered from tuberculosis.

Police had obtained “a confession” by Veredyuk, but it contradicted forensic evidence and a report from the crime scene.

On July 25 2002, the high court ordered prosecutors to begin a brand new investigation into the case.

A week earlier, Veredyuk, who had already been released from police custody, was found dead at the home of an acquaintance.

The Prosecutor General’s Office later acknowledged that Veredyuk had been poisoned. On April 15 2005, two police officers, Yevhen Drozdov and Oleg Tambovtsev, were sentenced to six years in prison for his murder.

Trial observers and Oleksandrov’s family believe that Veredyuk had been set up for the journalist’s murder by Donetsk law-enforcement officials.

Current Prosecutor-General Oleksandr Medvedko served as Donetsk Region prosecutor from 1992 to 1999. Between 1999 and 2001 he headed the Donetsk Regional Prosecutor’s Office’s directorate for legal oversight of investigations.

“I can’t affirm anything officially, but I know that Medvedko is involved in my husband’s case. I talked to the people he interrogated,” Oleksandrov’s widow, Lyudmyla told the Post in a July 25 phone interview.

“Everything was more or less correct and the Rybak brothers are among those who are guilty, but they are not the main plotters. As for the end of the story, much will depend on how the political situation in Ukraine goes,” she added. Before his death, Oleksandrov's Tor television station had uncovered allegations that Oleksandr Rybak, who headed a Donetsk Region sport club, was involved in ordering contract killings, the Post learned from the Institute of Mass Information in September 2003.

Like Gongadze, Oleksandrov had appealed to law-enforcement agencies when he felt that his reports on corruption might endanger his life.

As Oleksandrov’s family stressed in an open letter published in 2002: “In the Ihor Oleksandrov case, it is not the dead man, but those who are alive who need the truth.”The second Gongadze murder trial began in January this year and was postponed last month until September.