On the 15th anniversary of the disappearance of prominent Ukrainian journalist Georgy Gongadze, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatovic reiterated her call on the authorities to fully investigate the crime.
“Gongadze paid the ultimate price for his courageous work. Fifteen years on, his murder continues to have a dampening effect on the free expression and free media in Ukraine. The masterminds behind this vicious crime must be brought to justice,” reads a statement made by Mijatovic and posted on the OSCE website.
She also expressed concern about the lack of progress in the investigations of at least nine killings and numerous attacks against members of the media since the start of the conflict in and around the country.
“I call on the authorities to intensify investigations into the attacks on journalists to bring those responsible to justice,” Mijatovic wrote in a letter to Pavlo Klimkin, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine on Aug. 27.
As reported, journalist Gongadze disappeared on Sept. 16, 2000. Forensic experts said a headless corpse found in a forest near Kyiv in November that year might be Gongadze’s body and that cranium fragments found in the Kyiv region in 2009 were definitely parts of his skull.
However, the body remains unburied as Gongadze’s mother refuses to recognize it as her son’s remains.
Ex-Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma was charged by the Prosecutor General’s Office on March 21, 2011, of abusing power that led to Gongadze’s murder, but the Pechersky Court dropped the charges on Dec. 13, 2011, refusing to accept former presidential bodyguard Mykola Melnychenko’s audiotapes as evidence.
Kuchma denies his complicity in Gongadze’s murder.
On Jan. 29, 2013, the Pechersky Court found Oleksiy Pukach, former head of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry’s outdoor surveillance department, guilty of killing Gongadze and sentenced him to life in prison. Pukach was stripped of his rank as lieutenant-general.
The Kyiv Court of Appeals has received appeals from both sides against the verdict by the Pechersky Court. There was no hearing yet, and the verdict has yet to come into effect.
In December 2014, the Prosecutor General’s Office called for a public hearing of the appeal against the Pukach verdict. Ukraine’s Security Service, too, sought to declassify court hearings involving Pukach who was convicted of Gongadze’s murder.
On February the Kyiv Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a public hearing of appeals against the Pukach verdict.
