Part of Gongadze case now in the courts

One of the main headlines last Friday was the news that the Prosecutor General’s Office has handed over the first part of the Gongadze case to the Supreme Court. The court is to rule whether the three individuals accused of committing crimes under Part 3, Article 166 (abuse of power or office) and Item ‘i,’ Article 93 (premeditated murder perpetrated through conspiracy or by an organized group) of the 1960 Criminal Code should be brought to trial. The remaining part of this highest-profile case is still under pre-trial investigation, reports Interfax-Ukraine, citing the Prosecutor General’s Office press service.

As reported earlier, the Prosecutor General’s Office officially announced on Aug. 8, 2005, that it had completed the investigation into the case of Valeriy Kostenko, Mykola Protasov, and Oleksandr Popovych, which is part of criminal case No. 60-1241 about the premeditated murder of Heorhiy Gongadze. That day the parties were allowed to familiarize themselves with the case materials. Another person who is accused of the journalist’s murder, former chief of the external surveillance department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Oleksiy Pukach, is still at large.

However, the organizers of Gongadze’s murder have not been named yet, which means, in the view of the journalist’s family, which has repeatedly opposed handing the case to the courts in a piecemeal fashion, and the Ukrainian and international public, that this crime cannot be considered solved.

On Oct. 12 Sviatoslav Piskun — Ukraine’s only Prosecutor General at the time — announced the signing of a secret plan of investigative operations as part of the “second stage” of the journalist’s murder case. “We are continuing to conduct the second stage of the investigation. A plan of investigative operations in the Gongadze case has been approved and signed by Piskun, [Interior Minister] Lutsenko, and [Security Service Chief] Drizhchany. This secret and comprehensive plan is aimed at completing the second stage, i.e., to identify those who masterminded and organized the crime,” Piskun told PORA activists and journalists. The two other signers refused pointblank to go into the details of this process.

In early November the European Court of Human Rights handed down a ruling in the case “Gongadze vs. Ukraine”, according to which the state is to pay the plaintiff, the murdered journalist’s widow Myroslava Gongadze, 100,000 euros as compensation for material and moral damages. The seven-member court unanimously ruled that the Gongadze case violated Article 2 of the European Convention of Human Rights: the Ukrainian government failed to save the life of her husband Heorhiy and conduct a proper investigation into his death. The European Court judges also ruled that Articles 3 of the Convention (ban on inhuman treatment) and 13 (right to effective court defense) were violated.

As cynical as it may sound, it is absolutely clear today that any tangible results of the investigation into the Gongadze case that could be shown to this country and the outside world would be a serious lever for the ruling coalition in its election campaign. But it is also obvious that the report of the Ukrainian Themis [Greek goddess of justice] will be rejected unless the organizers of the murder are named. In other words, there is still no light at the end of the tunnel.