Ukraine and the world could be on the verge of finally learning who ordered the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze, who was kidnapped, beaten, strangled, beheaded and burned – apparently just because his work on the Ukrainska Pravda news site irritated people in power then.
But President Viktor Yanukovych and the nation’s judiciary – a branch of the government widely seen as subservient to the presidential administration – don’t want the public to know what is happening.
The murder trial of ex-Interior Ministry Gen. Oleksiy Pukach is taking place in Kyiv behind closed doors, the indictments are sealed and the public has no idea what is going on inside. The justification behind the blanket closure is protection of state secrets.
This is no way to instill confidence in a judiciary that is widely held in disrepute. The public’s right to know what is happening in a decade-long tale of murder and cover-ups by top officials outweighs any claim to state secrets.
If there were legitimate state secrets at stake, only the portions of the trial involving them should be closed to the public – not everything, as is the case now.
If there were legitimate state secrets at stake, only the portions of the trial involving them should be closed to the public – not everything, as is the case now.
So Ukraine is left relying on the word of two court observers with privileged status, Valentyna Telychenko, who has access by virtue of her role as widow Myroslava Gongadze’s lawyer, and Oleksiy Podolsky, a former journalist who Pukach kidnapped and beat in a similar fashion to the crime involving Gongadze.
This week’s sensation barely sent a ripple through the public because it is what many people have assumed all along, based on the available evidence: That the volatile ex-President Leonid Kuchma set in motion the chain of events that led to Gongadze’s murder.
We have the “suicide” by two gunshot wounds of his confidant, the late Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko; the confession of Pukach; and the conviction of Pukach’s three subordinates for the crime…
If Kuchma is truly the victim of a smear campaign, as he has claimed all these years, he has an interest in having this trial open – so that the public can judge for themselves the veracity of the accusations against him.
The charges against him – abuse of office in giving an order that led to Gongadze’s death – should be fast-tracked for trial, rather than lingering since March.
If Yanukovych is serious about his claim that there is no longer a caste of untouchables above the law, he should back up his words by insisting on public, jury trials for the accused and prod the judicial system to get moving on the trial of Kuchma.
