(AP) – Ukraine’s former top prosecutor filed an appeal against President Viktor Yushchenko’s decision to fire him, a presidential adviser said Oct. 26.
Svyatoslav Pyskun asked a Kyiv court to return him to the powerful post of prosecutor general, said Mykola Poludenniy, a legal adviser to Yushchenko.
Pyskun was sacked earlier this month and Yushchenko’s office later accused the prosecutor of dragging out important investigations.
“Everything was done according to the law,” Poludenniy told The Associated Press.
Pyskun, who could not be reached for comment, had been an unpopular figure and many of Yushchenko’s Orange Revolution supporters criticized the president for not dismissing Pyskun earlier.
He claimed that he was sacked because of a criminal investigation into one of the president’s closest allies, Petro Poroshenko. The abuse-of-office case against Poroshenko was closed last week after Pyskun was fired.
Pyskun had also served as the country’s top prosecutor under former President Leonid Kuchma, but was fired in 2003 after Kuchma accused him of trying to politicize the powerful office.
Pyskun countered that Kuchma fired him because he had come close to making key arrests in the 2000 killing of investigative journalist Georgy Gongadze, a murder that Kuchma’s critics accused him of ordering.
Pyskun also challenged that dismissal and a court ordered his reinstatement.
