The case on the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze is to be sent to court in January 2011, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka has said.
"All materials on the completion of the investigation into the Gongadze case are to be submitted not later than Dec. 7," the prosecutor general said in an interview with the Inter TV Channel on Saturday.
Pshonka added: "We have to send the criminal case to the court in January."
According to the prosecutor general, if the materials of this case are not sent to the court in January, then the terms of restraint on former head of the Interior Ministry’s external surveillance department Oleksiy Pukach, who is in custody, would have to be changed.
"I believe the investigation will not allow this and in the near future materials will be submitted and then sent to the court," Pshonka said.
Gongadze went missing in Kyiv on Sept. 16, 2000. A beheaded corpse was found in a forest outside Kyiv in November 2000, and experts concluded that it was likely Gongadze’s. Ukrainian Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko said in May 2010 that the skull fragments found in the Kyiv region in July 2009 were those of Gongadze.
In 2008, three former officers from the Ukrainian Interior Ministry Outdoor Surveillance and Criminal Intelligence Department, Col. Valeriy Kostenko, Col. Mykola Protasov, and Maj. Oleksandr Popovych, were found guilty of killing Gongadze. Pukach, another suspect in the case, was detained in the Zhytomyr region on July 21, 2009.
Oleksiy Pukach, the former chief of the main criminal investigation department at the ministry’s foreign surveillance unit, who was long on the wanted list, was arrested in Zhytomyr region in July 2009, as a result of a joint operation by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Prosecutor General’s Office. On July 23, Kyiv Pechersky district court decided to remand Pukach, who was charged with being involved with Gongadze murder, in custody.
The Prosecutor General’s Office reported on Sept. 14, 2010, that the pre-trial investigation into Gongadze’s murder, allegedly by Oleksiy Pukach, and in relation to the late Yuriy Kravchenko, who is suspected of having ordered this crime, is drawing to an end.
In early October, the Prosecutor General’s Office officially confirmed the replacement of the head of the investigative group in charge of Pukach case. The head of the investigative group, Oleksandr Kharchenko, was replaced with the investigator of cases of particular importance, Vladyslav Hryschenko. The investigation into this case has been resumed.
