Vitrenko Sets Date With SBU Chief
The chief of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) Leonid Derkach is to be subpoenaed to attend a court session which will examine an alleged attempt on the life of former presidential candidate Natalia Vitrenko in which a grenade was thrown at her injuring her and several others on October 2, 1999. Following an appeal by the three People’s Deputies who had suffered from the assault, Natalia Vitrenko, Volodymyr Marchenko and, Natalia Lymar, the Dnipropetrovsk oblast court, which has resumed its hearings on the case after a one-month break, ruled to subpoena Leonid Derkach. The statement to have Derkach attend the hearings was made public by Natalia Vitrenko in court.
Explaining her motion to subpoena the head of the Security Service, Ms. Vitrenko said he might help establish the name of the person who was behind the attempt.
The court has also complied with the request of lawmakers to subpoena the author of a story which had been published by Silski visti (Village News) and allegedly threw new light on the assault in Kryvy Rih. The plaintiffs also succeeded in having other high-ranking officials subpoenaed.
The defendants in the case have been equally active, submitting pleas and appeals to every conceivable agency, the Presidential Administration, Supreme Court and Prosecutor General topping the list. At the court session, they pleaded with the judges to release them on bail and to extend the period allotted by the court for the study of case materials. One of the defendants, Serhiy Ivanchenko, Oleksandr Moroz’s former election campaign aide in Kryvy Rih, said that he had managed to acquaint himself with twenty volumes of his case out of a total of 27 but had not seen a single videotape out of the thirty total. Having considered these statements, the court has rescheduled its next hearings for December 18.
Meanwhile, the leader of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, Natalia Vitrenko, called a press conference to share her vision of the events enveloping both the Kryvy Rih bombing and the disappearance of Heorhy Gongadze. In her view, Oleksandr Moroz’s sensational statement in Verkhovna Rada blowing the whistle on President Kuchma and other top officials involvement in the Gongadze disappearance was “merely an attempt by Moroz to deflect public interest from the Ivanchenko case.” Moreover, she added, “A grand political game” is currently underway in Ukraine to remove Leonid Kuchma and make Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko president. The Progressive Socialist chairwoman also sees some geopolitical undercurrents, as the Americans, who compete with Russia for influence in Ukraine, begin to show increased interest in the Moroz scandal. In this game, the timing of Moroz’s sensational statement is “no accident.” “Ivanchenko and Co.... will do everything to delay the trial,” she believes. Vitrenko assumes that the defendants expect their case “will ultimately be quashed” and that the justice should step in to disrupt such plans. Thus far, she has been pleased with the performance of the court, saying the course of the procedures in Dnipropetrovsk is “absolutely democratic.” Vitrenko places great hope in Security Service Chairman Leonid Derkach’s appearance at the trial, expecting him to reveal the name of the person who ordered the assault. She had found no such name in the documents submitted by the prosecution, she said.
