KYIV, Feb. 12 (AP) - Forensic experts examining the body of a prominent Ukrainian journalist found dead last year have discovered no signs of foul play, officials said Wednesday.
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The preliminary autopsy by experts from Ukraine, Belarus and France found no signs of violence in the death of Mykhailo Kolomiyets, said Vasyl Chernykov, deputy head of investigations in the Prosecutor General’s office.
However, investigators plan to conduct more tests and interview close friends and colleagues before ruling the death a suicide, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said.
Kolomiyets, director of the Ukrainian News Agency, went missing last October and his body was found a month later hanging from a tree near in Minsk.
Police called his death a suicide, but relatives and colleagues pressed for an investigation, saying his death could be related to his agency’s independent reporting.
Leonid Zverev of the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said Kolomiyets’ death remains an “open question.”
“We’ve yet to find a person who’s said that Kolomiyets was stressed or emotionally unstable,” Zverev said. “He was a very logical man, so why would he go to Belarus to take his life if he could do it in his apartment in Kyiv?”
