Who else is capable of a brave deed?

The term of appeal against the court ruling which temporarily eased the anxiety of ex-president Leonid Kuchma has come to an end. No one, except for Kuchma’s lawyers, remains satisfied with the ruling the Pechersky Court handed down on December 14. Andrii Fedur, representative of the aggrieved party, Lesia Gongadze, is the only one who did not appeal. The lawyer commented to The Day: “If the Prosecutor General’s Office deems it necessary, it will lodge and win an appeal of its own.” The rest, namely, lawyers of the key witness in the Melnychenko case; the representative of the aggrieved party, Myroslava Gongadze; the aggrieved party, Oleksii Podolsky; and, finally, the Prosecutor General’s Office itself, have appealed the creation of Judge Suprun.

“We disagree with this ruling. We think the criminal case must be investigated and comprehensively heard in court,” Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka said. Naturally, it would be strange if the ruling were not appealed after Rinat Kuzmin said about “a mountain of dead bodies around this case.” Otherwise, all the i’s would have been dotted and the t’s crossed long ago.

“I have drawn up and mailed today [December 21. – Author] a complaint about this ruling to the Court of Appeal,” said Valentyna Telychenko, Myroslava Gongadze’s lawyer. Myroslava Gongadze’s representative expressed a wish to appeal the Pechersky Court ruling immediately after the session.

The ruling was made “with a gross violation of the norms of criminal and procedural law, with a gross violation of the established constitutional principles of judicial procedure, and is based on the trial conclusions that run counter to the factual circumstances of the case,” the appeal of Melnychenko’s lawyer Mykola Nedilko says. When asked what he expects from the appeal, the lawyer of the key witness in the Kuchma case, Pavlo Sychov, said: “Justice.” What a simple but so much difficult for our judicial system phrase!

The appeal of the aggrieved party, Podolsky, contains not only legal claims but also an analytical overview of the Kuchma system. Here is one of the most illustrious fragments of this complaint: “Over almost the 12 years that have taken the investigation into the Gongadze murder and the crime against me, I have been a direct witness to the fact that all the governmental institutions of Ukraine – the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Security Service, the Interior Ministry, the Pechersky Court, and even the Kyiv Court of Appeal – have been guided in these cases by anything but the laws and the Constitution of Ukraine. For this reason, I do not harbor the slightest illusion about the positive outcome of this appeal against an unjust ruling by Judge Halyna Suprun. So I am taking this procedural step with the only aim: to document, for the future Ukrainian and the current European justice, another unjust instance of the state protection of Leonid Kuchma’s political family which is trying today to evade responsibility for systemic political violence – the key sign of the Kuchmocracy regime, – for the violence that affected millions of Ukrainians who were barred, by the power of the state and by way of governmental fraud, from private distribution of their common property; for violence against thousands of the Ukrainian human rights advocates and journalists who were tortured with policemen’s jackboots, ‘educated’ with security forces’ truncheons or a thug’s brass knuckles for seeking the truth and justice; for a series of high-profile contract murders – Vadym Hetman, Viacheslav Chornovil, Heorhii Gongadze, and others; – for the liquidation of Yurii Kravchenko, Kuchma’s family friend and henchman, the chief perpetrator of and witness to Kuchma’s crimes; for the murders that were committed, as far as consequences and motives are concerned, exclusively in favor of the political and governmental interests of Kuchma and his inner circle of relatives and property owners” (for more details, read Podolsky’s blog http://opodolski.livejournal.com).

Mr. Podolsky again took part the other day in the Pukach trial which is directly linked to the Gongadze case. According to the aggrieved party, it is his lawyers who will, from now on, represent his interests in the trial. “After Judge Melnyk refused to accept my challenge and continued to hear the case, I could no longer trust him. So I announced that I would no longer take part in the trial without my lawyers who will offer me legal assistance. Melnyk agreed to this and gave me time to find lawyers. I have found them. The judge has now allowed them to fully participate in the trial. They will be representing my interests. The session was adjourned until January 18. My lawyers, Oleksandr Zarutsky and Mykola Holodniak, are professionals. They are also lawyers of the parents of the student Ihor Indylo who died at Kyiv’s Shevchenkivsky District police station,” Podolsky said.

The simultaneous and collective (so to speak) appeal against bailing out Kuchma can mean that it is now more difficult to defend the ex-president. Yet everything may happen if connections and big money intervene. But not always… In 2002, in spite of all the circumstances, the Kyiv Court of Appeal Judge Yurii Vasylenko instituted criminal proceedings against the then President Leonid Kuchma. Although that case was a nonstarter, it was a brave deed. There are other conditions today – a different president, Prosecutor General, etc. Which of them is capable of a brave deed?