Eight years after the murder that helped spark a popular uprising against Ukraine's entrenched and corrupt elite, justice has not arrived in the Georgiy Gongadze case.
Those who ordered and organized Georgiy Gongadze’s killing have never been punished, while three men convicted of the actual murder in 2000 are in prison and a fourth is missing.
The massive crowds are long gone from the 2004 democratic Orange Revolution that sought to rid the nation of a rigged presidential election and other abuses of exPresident Leonid Kuchma’s era. In their place, on the Sept. 16 anniversary of Gongadze’s disappearance, a relative trickle of mourners kept the memories – and pursuit of justice – alive.
Ukraine’s leaders were noticeably absent from the Independence Square memorial services, despite their repeated promises that “bandits will be behind bars” and “justice is worth fighting for.” And the country’s journalists uttered barely a peep in solidarity with Gongadze and other slain comrades.
Gongadze’s mother, Lesia, refused to attend any public services for her son this year. “I never saw my son dead… what I saw [the decomposing headless body] does not belong to my son. No death certificate has been issued,” she told Deutsche Welle radio.
Lesia Gongadze requested that Sept. 16 be recognized as a day of mourning for all Ukrainian journalists who died unnatural deaths. At a requiem service held at Kyiv’s Independence Square, the memories of 63 journalists who “died prematurely” since independence were honored with eight minutes of silence.
The 2000 kidnapping and murder of Gongadze, who railed against the corruption of the Kuchma era, resonated throughout Ukraine and the rest of the world. The founder of the Ukrainska Pravda online newspaper, Gongadze exposed fraud and corruption within ruling circles. He publicly posed hardhitting questions to leading politicians, including Kuchma.
He disappeared late on Sept. 16, 2000, while on his way home and after formally complaining to Ukraine’s general prosecutor about being harassed and shadowed by police. His beheaded corpse was found 130 kilometers south of Kyiv in November.
That month, parliamentarian Oleksandr Moroz publicly disclosed the existence of taped conversations purportedly recorded by former Kuchma bodyguard Mykola Melnychenko. The bombshell tapes implicated the expresident and numerous aides in a host of crimes, including the abduction of Gongadze.
But just as the investigation petered out into whether the events described on the tapes actually happened, the Gongadze investigation lost traction – or was thwarted – depending on one’s perspective.
In March, a Kyiv court sentenced three former police services employees convicted of killing Gongadze. They are to spend 12 to 13 years behind bars. But people suspected or accused of ordering and organizing the murder remain at large. Notable among them is police general Oleksiy Pukach, who has variously been reported to be in Israel, Ukraine and even India. Three other highlevel police officials wanted as witnesses died under mysterious circumstances in a domino effect of deaths.
The general prosecutor’s office is “doing nothing but imitating investigation” into who ordered and organized the killing of Gongadze, said the lawyer of Gongadze’s widow, Myroslava, on Sept. 15.
Lawyer Valentyna Telychenko said that officials justify the lack of progress by claiming that Gongadze case “belongs to the category of cases that will never be solved, like [the assassination of U.S. president John] Kennedy.”
Melnychenko says that, on the recordings, Kuchma can be heard discussing Gongadze 14 times over a fourmonth time period.
In August 2008, Moroz – the man who first blew the whistle on Gongadze’s murder – surprised journalists when he said that he does not think Kuchma ordered the death.
“Kuchma’s [emotional] complexes were used: his hot temper and lack of restraint. His statements were twisted and used very well. I do not think he has anything to do with the journalist’s death,” Moroz said a few days before Kuchma’s lavish 70th birthday celebrations.
Melnychenko, the former member of Kuchma’s personal security detail who claims to have recorded the president’s conversation in 2000, had a very different assessment of who is to blame for the stalled investigation.
He told the Kyiv Post that the current prosecutorial team working on the case has done everything possible to move the case forward and that the lack of progress is now the fault of the United States. In 2001, Melnychenko was granted asylum in the United States when he fled Ukraine in fear for his life.
Melnychenko showed a letter he received from Ukraine’s general prosecutor’s office in July. In the letter, the senior investigator in the Gongadze case provides a short history of yearlong efforts to get the FBI to conduct a forensic investigation of Melnychenko’s recording and equipment.
According to Melnychenko’s letter, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe received confirmation from the U.S. government in September of last year that FBI experts will take part in the forensics examination. Then, in July of this year, when Ukrainian prosecutors met with U.S. representatives in Kyiv, the Americans “categorically declared that the government and law enforcement bodies of the USA… will not participate in the international examination, but do not oppose that the handing over [of recordings and equipment] take place in the United States, in the Embassy of Ukraine in the United States,” according to the letter Melnychenko showed.
Melnychenko said the original recordings and equipment are safe and sound in the United States.
“If the recordings and equipment were fake, I would be criminally liable not only in Ukraine but in the U.S. as well,” he said.
Melnychenko said that the FBI’s refusal has political reasons. “Many Ukrainians hoped for U.S. support. Ukraine extended its hand, but the U.S. chopped it off,” Melnychenko said. “The recordings contain a conversation where [former SBU chief Leonid] Derkach tells Kuchma that Bush Junior will be the next president of the United States. This was in the summer of 2000, months before the election. Derkach told Kuchma that there is a person in Bush’s entourage, an adviser, whom the Ukrainian secret services have influence over. The Ukrainian mafia has thrown a lot of money at Bush and now America, like Pontius Pilate, is washing its hands,” he said.
The U.S. government denied Melnychenko’s allegations. “We have and will continue to respond to all requests from the government of Ukraine for assistance on a broad range of law enforcement issues. This is because we continue to support the rule of law in Ukraine. We do not comment on individual law enforcement cases,” said Nancy B. Pettit, spokeswoman at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv.
Meanwhile, Mykhailo Svystovych, a civic activist for the nongovernmental Maidan Alliance, keeps on organizing memorial services in Kyiv every Sept. 16. Despite the rain and cold, this year’s requiem gathered more people than a year ago. “All 500 candles were given out,” Svystovych said. More than 2,000 candles were used to spell out “Gia,” the diminutive of Gongadze’s first name. The event was ignored by leading politicians, including the president and prime minister, who built their political popularity on promises to solve the Gongadze and other cases.
“They promised to solve the case to the end. They should be ashamed,” Svystovych said.
Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky attended the event. The next day, his Khreshchatyk newspaper ran a front page photo with the mayor holding a candle at the ceremony. Most newspapers in the capital city simply ignored the event.
“These events provide too much speculation on Gongadze,” said Roman Skrypin, a veteran journalist and friend to Gongadze.
“There were a lot of young people at the [Kyiv] service, 20 year olds that never knew Gongadze,” Svystovych said. He said that social networking sites were instrumental in generating interest among youth.
Requiems for Gongadze were also held in Chernihiv, Lviv and Halych.
