2001: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

The Gongadze case: a murder still unsolved

Dominating press reports in the first part of 2001, was the disappearance and apparent murder of the young journalist Heorhii Gongadze, publisher of the Internet newspaper Ukrainska Pravda.

Before the matter left the front pages of Ukraine's newspapers around mid-year, the events that transpired led to mass demonstrations and violence on the streets of Kyiv by citizens and political leaders who had become convinced that the country's president and several of his top officials were implicated in the matter - or at least in a cover-up.

While the case had reached international prominence in 2000, during the first six months of 2001 European structures began to attempt to influence the situation in Ukraine. At the same time most global leaders kept Ukraine at arm's length diplomatically. However, as 2001 ended, the investigation by Ukraine's law enforcement officials had come no closer to solving the murder or the mystery behind tape recordings secretly made in the office of the president of Ukraine, which are so closely connected to the Gongadze affair.

In the process, the affair had taken down several top law enforcement officials and nearly the president as well, who held on - but only after coming uncomfortably close to a critical political juncture.

The affair began when Mr. Gongadze, a former radio journalist who was publishing one of Ukraine's first Internet newspapers, left the apartment of his chief editor, Olena Prytula, on the evening of September 16 and disappeared without a trace. That immediately caused concern because Mr. Gongadze was a major critic of President Leonid Kuchma and the business oligarchs who surround him and had recently began publishing a series of stories outing their alleged illegal activities.

Less than two months into the investigation a headless body turned up in a shallow grave in a wooded area outside the town of Tarascha, located 75 miles south of Kyiv. Ms. Prytula heard that an unclaimed body of a young man was lying in a morgue in Tarascha and traveled there with some colleagues on November 16. They found the decomposed remains of what appeared to be Mr. Gongadze. The body had scars from a bullet wound identical to ones received several years earlier when the journalist took part in the Abkhazia armed conflict in Georgia. Also, jewelry matching that worn by the journalist was found near the site where the remains were discovered.

The town's medical examiner agreed to sign a death warrant and turn the corpse over to Ms. Prytula, but before that could be done the body disappeared. Soon afterwards it reappeared at the Kyiv central morgue, where state militia said they had transferred it to keep as evidence for a potential criminal case after tests to ascertain its identity were completed. The Tarascha medical examiner was charged with illegally handling evidence.

These controversial events raised the profile of the case considerably, both nationally and internationally. The affair reached true crisis proportions on November 28 when National Deputy Oleksander Moroz revealed that he had a series of tape recordings in which President Kuchma and two top government officials, Chief of Staff Volodymyr Lytvyn and Minister of Internal Affairs Yurii Kravchenko, supposedly were heard discussing how to get rid of Mr. Gongadze.

The person who made the recording was Maj. Mykola Melnychenko, a former bodyguard in the presidential security service, who explained that he could no longer stand by and watch as criminal acts were taking place at the highest levels of government and decided he needed to act. He said he placed a digital recording device behind a couch in the president's private office.

Ten days into the New Year, Procurator General Mykhailo Potebenko, under pressure to report to the Verkhovna Rada on the state of the investigation, told a general session of lawmakers that there was a 99.6 percent probability that the beheaded corpse unearthed in November was in fact the body of the missing journalist.

Mr. Potebenko, who had been severely criticized by various lawmakers for what seemed like delay tactics in issuing information on how the investigation was proceeding, said he could not be 100 percent sure the body was that of Mr. Gongadze until more information had been gathered. He also said that he was not prepared to release the body for burial to avoid "a situation in which Mr. Gongadze reappears, alive. How will I then explain the situation?"

The procurator general also commented on the Melnychenko tapes, which he called fakes. "The tapes are a falsification. I say this categorically," Mr. Potebenko said, adding that the criminal case into the recordings themselves had been closed and charges had been brought against Mr. Melnychenko instead, among them criminal slander and fraud in obtaining a travel passport. On February 2 Mr. Potebenko changed the official stance of his agency regarding the recordings and acknowledged that the voices and conversations were authentic but that they had been carefully manipulated to achieve the intended results.

The day before Mr. Potebenko's presentation, Lesia Gongadze, the journalist's mother, had filed suit to have the procurator general removed from the case for incompetent handling of the matter and for his refusal to share information in a timely manner on progress made in the investigation.

On January 11 Mrs. Gongadze told the newspaper Den that it was time to accept the results of the DNA testing and bury her son's body. The same day the procurator general said he would do so in two to three days.

Five days later the matter had not been settled, and Mrs. Gongadze had changed her mind. In an appearance before the Verkhovna Rada, which brought many of those in attendance to tears, she explained that she could not bury the body found in Tarascha until she was 100 percent sure it belonged to her son.

"I and my family have been pressured to bury the body in Lviv," she explained. "They told me that a plane is ready and there's a spot at the Lychakiv Cemetery. But I am the mother, and I need to know whose body I am laying to rest." She said she wanted additional testing to be done, as was her right by law, and needed to have the head that belonged to the body found.

Meanwhile, health officials who had taken part in examining the body said they were under pressure to keep mum about the details of the forensic examination. Svitlana Karmeliuk, a DNA expert, said that law enforcement personnel had broken into her apartment and confiscated her international passport to intimidate her. State militia officials refuted the allegations and said that they had entered legally to take the passport and correct errors found in it.

A tent city that had stood on Independence Square to protest the way the government was conducting the Gongadze investigation, which was removed by authorities on the eve of the New Year, gave rise to an anti-Kuchma movement that became known as Ukraine Without Kuchma. In January the group, which was led by representatives of the Socialist Party, announced that it was in the process of registering with authorities as an official civic organization.

On February 9 a parallel structure of politicians and lawmakers was formed. Called the Forum of National Salvation, it announced that it would cooperate with the Ukraine Without Kuchma movement to end Mr. Kuchma's presidency. Among the political organizations involved in both organizations were the Socialist Party, the Batkivschyna Party, the Sobor Party, the Republican Party, the Conservative Republican Party and the Ukrainian National Assembly - Ukrainian National Self Defense Organization (UNA-UNSO), a paramilitary and political organization.

An attempt to remove Procurator General Potebenko, the person the anti-Kuchma forces held responsible for the cover-up of the truth behind the Gongadze matter and the tape scandal, failed miserably in the Verkhovna Rada on February 22. Five times various lawmakers from the Forum for National Salvation introduced resolutions for dismissal, and five times they failed to come close to getting the 226 votes needed for a majority.

Nonetheless, the anti-Kuchma movement continued to gain momentum. To stop ever-increasing demonstrations, state militia systematically began to tear down tent cities set up by anti-Kuchma forces in Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Lviv, Rivne, Zhytomyr, Mykolaiv and Chernihiv.

The Gongadze affair went international on January 25 when the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly condemned the lack of freedom of expression in Ukraine. In a special session devoted to the crisis in Ukraine, the human rights body of representatives of European lawmakers decided to organize an independent investigation into certain aspects of the case, including an analysis of the digital recordings, and to give their source political asylum.

Meanwhile, back in Ukraine, law enforcement officials continued to order the destruction of tent cities that continued to pop up throughout Ukraine. The one re-established in Kyiv on Independence Square after the Christmas holidays was again disassembled on January 27, and a giant green construction wall was placed around the square for what city officials said was preparatory work for the beginning of reconstruction of the city's central plaza in advance of 10th anniversary Independence Day celebrations seven months down the line.

The anti-Kuchma demonstrations entered a new, much more turbulent phase when more than 10,000 people took to the streets of Kyiv on February 6. The protest march, which ended on the Khreschatyk, Kyiv's main thoroughfare, was marked by scuffles between demonstrators and state militia, and among marchers, as right-oriented protesters attempted to bar participation by Communist representatives in a rally after the march.

Early that morning hundreds of people had begun entering the city from the provinces, many complaining that they had been harassed and intimidated by law enforcement officers as they came in on trains and by car. More violence occurred around noon when some 300 members of a heretofore unheard of group called the Anarchist Syndicate fell upon the latest anti-Kuchma encampment - located on the Khreschatyk on a swath of pavement adjoining Independence Square - pushing elderly individuals to the ground while tearing down tents, placards and Ukrainian flags. Some of the tent city inhabitants said they had recognized young cadets from the local state militia academy among the assailants.

Five days later the chants of marchers again echoed through the downtown streets of Ukraine's capital as some 5,000 demonstrators descended on the central square of Kyiv to call on President Kuchma to resign for his alleged involvement in the disappearance of Mr. Gongadze. This time, shouting "Kuchma Out" and carrying placards bearing inscriptions such as "Kuchma Kaput," the protesters formed a human chain the length of the kilometer-long Khreschatyk. At dusk they lit candles during a vigil.

Meanwhile the tent city, which had been re-established on February 6, had grown to 40 tents. To make it difficult for state militia officers to destroy them once again, specific national deputies aligned with the Forum For National Salvation laid claim to each of the tents.

In a show of understanding, if not support, for the goals proclaimed by the demonstrators who were sleeping on the Khreschatyk, leaders of the Reform and Order Party and the National Rukh of Ukraine - who had largely remained outside the fray - on February 12 plastered the construction wall that enclosed Independence Square with posters and flyers calling on "Ukraine for the Truth."

Also in the first part of February, the International Press Institute in Vienna, in conjunction with the U.S.-based Freedom House, announced that it had received and would analyze nine segments of the recordings made by Maj. Melnychenko, totaling some 25 minutes. On February 27 the two groups released their findings, which they called "inconclusive." However, they indicated that it was More likely than not that the tapes were real. The report noted that the recordings were of a type that made the possibility of doctoring them "rather slim" even if done on a professional level.

The apogee of the Gongadze affair probably occurred on March 9 when downtown Kyiv became a battleground between state militia forces and demonstrators looking for trouble.

The tragic events actually began on March 1 when law enforcement officials moved on the tent city that had stood on the Khreschatyk for nearly a month, tearing down and scooping up tents and national flags, which were hauled away by several dump trucks. They also beat and arrested some 30 people who resisted the action and placed themselves before the wheels of the giant vehicles.

Several national deputies, chiefly from the Batkivschyna and Socialist parties, but also Taras Chornovil from the National Rukh of Ukraine, who had become increasingly active in the protest movement, criticized the police action as an affront to their rights as lawmakers because each tent was clearly marked as belonging to a specific national deputy.

Another tent city, this one at Shevchenko Park, was torn down on March 6, two days after it was established. Law enforcement officials, who had been severely criticized for their heavy-handed tactics on the Khreschatyk, were not visible this time. The clean-up was left to municipal workers who moved on the tents early in the morning while the students who had erected the tents were in class.

What would turn out to be the final serious confrontation between the country's leadership and the Ukraine Without Kuchma movement began on March 9, the birthday of Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine's national bard. As was customary, plans called for President Kuchma and the country's leadership to place wreaths at the Shevchenko monument located in the Kyiv park bearing the poet's name. What was not customary was that 3,000 law enforcement officers and intelligence service agents swept the park with dogs and cordoned off the area in the wee hours of the morning. They later explained that they had taken the action after receiving bomb threats.

People who arrived with the daylight to commemorate the holiday and pay their respects before the statue to the Ukrainian bard were turned away, viciously at times. National Deputy Valentyna Semeniuk of the Socialist Party claimed she was punched in the face and her arm injured by state militia officers intent on not allowing her to get to the memorial after she attempted to force her way through the police line.

The first major confrontation took place when police tried to move back a large crowd of about 300 young demonstrators, many of them members of the paramilitary UNA-UNSO political organization, who were demanding access to the park. After being refused, they rushed riot-gear-clad officers in waves, at one point lifting and heaving metal barricades at the state militia lines. A female member of the UNA-UNSO climbed a top a low-lying building while the altercations were taking place and began to heave objects at officers, who responded by dragging her down and beating her with their batons and kicking her.

The presidential motorcade arrived to lay flowers just as a semblance of calm was restored. Mr. Kuchma, along with other top government and parliamentary leaders, quickly went through a short wreath-laying ceremony before departing. With them gone, law enforcement officers made a quick retreat to waiting busses, leaving the park to the demonstrators who proceeded to tear apart the wreaths adorned with blue-yellow bunting that the official delegation had left moments before.

The crowd, which had swelled to nearly 2,000 persons, next proceeded to the Ministry of Internal Affairs headquarters, where they demanded the release of several of their cohorts who had been arrested. Unexpectedly, after about an hour, a state militia paddy wagon pulled up and released three of the arrested. The arrested were freed in a show of good faith, the state militia later said. That act did not pacify the crowd, as might have been expected. The vehicle was pummeled and several protesters tried to drag an occupant onto the street as it pulled away.

An increasingly restless crowd then moved to the Khreschatyk, where some 18,000 gathered for a rally. Afterwards, at another Ministry of Internal Affairs building in another section of the city, the marchers tore down protective barriers and pelted the building with eggs and bottles before moving on to the Presidential Administration Building for a final showdown with the state militia.

There, officers dressed in riot gear and carrying metal shields did what they could to protect themselves from the onslaught as marchers came at them with the metal barricades that were supposed to keep the two groups separated. But they also gave as good as they got, hammering demonstrators with batons and their shields.

The situation turned tragic when Molotov cocktails from the crowd were lofted at the officers, burning several of them before the flames were doused. The militia responded by hurtling tear gas at the marchers, who quickly scattered, ending the demonstration for all practical purposes.

Minutes later, remnants of the UNA-UNSO force that had begun the assault on the militia marched onto the Khreschatyk in song and went through several military drills before dispersing.

That evening scores of youths leaving Kyiv on trains were rounded up in a militia sweep, most of them for wearing "For the Truth" buttons that had been passed out during the day by the newly formed organization of the same name that had aligned itself with the anti-Kuchma movement. Militia also raided the Kyiv offices of UNA-UNSO, beating and arresting its leader, Andrii Shkil, and other prominent figures of the organization.

Trying to explain how organizers lost control of the demonstrations, which were supposed to be peaceful, Yurii Lutsenko, the leader of Ukraine Without Kuchma, said he heard that those who had thrown the firebombs were not members of the march, but had appeared from a side street and disappeared once their deed was done. Mr. Chornovil agreed that the fire bombers were not part of the demonstration, but were placed in the crowd to put the protest and its cause in a bad light. He accused the state militia of using excessive force against the marchers and of indiscriminate use of arrest powers in the sweep of the trains.

Meanwhile, militia officials said their officers had used force sufficient to adequately keep the situation under control and to defend themselves, and could not be blamed for inciting either of the two major clashes that had occurred.

Less than a week later rumors floated about Kyiv that Minister of Internal Affairs Kravchenko would resign. While they were initially denied by President Kuchma on March 21, a week later Ukraine's top cop, the longest serving minister in government, was gone after the president finally accepted his resignation.

While the streets of Kyiv remained quiet for a while, Lviv had its turn when demonstrations erupted there on March 12 in protest of the mass arrests in the capital only days earlier. More than 3,000 students from various educational institutions took part in exclusively peaceful rallies in support of the arrested. Among them were some of the 212 or so individuals who had been roughed up and taken into militia custody, if only temporarily. The students spoke openly of being beaten with billy clubs and thrown to the ground to be roughly searched.

Protesters returned to the streets of Kyiv on March 24, but in a much more peaceful manner, as more than 5,000 marchers commemorated what organizers called a memorial to "the victims of the Kuchma regime."

It now appeared that Mr. Kuchma was ready to negotiate with the oppositionist forces to end the political controversy and civil strife. The president dismissed Mr. Kravchenko and put in an appearance at the grave of Vyacheslav Chornovil on the anniversary of his death - a symbolic concession to meet with the enemy on his home turf. The president said he was willing to re-open the investigation into the mysterious events surrounding the death of Mr. Chornovil as some oppositionist members had been demanding and was willing to negotiate with them on other matters as well.

For several days it looked like matters had taken a turn for the better, but then a German analysis of DNA from the Tarascha body, which had been organized by National Deputy Serhii Holovatyi, another key oppositionist leader and a leading member of the parliamentary ad hoc committee investigating the Gongadze affair, concluded that the body was not Mr. Gongadze's.

The analysis, which gave a completely different result than the Russian study commissioned by Ukraine's chief prosecutor months earlier, was on samples taken from the Tarascha corpse by the journalist's colleague, Ms. Prytula, when she first identified it in November.

Ukraine formally asked the U.S. for help in identifying the decapitated corpse on March 27 during a visit to Washington by Ukraine's Minister of Foreign Affairs Anatolii Zlenko. Mr. Zlenko presented Secretary of State Colin Powell a letter from the Ukrainian government requesting FBI assistance in the matter.

On March 30 the mother of the slain journalist and his wife, Myroslava, filed suit in Kyiv to have the Procurator General's Office give them access to all information and evidence related to the case, which they, as legally recognized victims in the case, had the authority to review, but had yet to see. They also restated their demand that authorities begin a comprehensive set of analyses to determine the manner and time of death of the corpse.

Then on April 3, the journalist's widow, Myroslava, said she wanted to see the FBI return to Kyiv to finish the DNA analysis they had begun before the journalist's mother had halted the process because she refused to give her own blood.

Assistant Procurator General Oleksander Bahanets threw aside the claims of the two women when he said that victims are not required to have access to case materials during the investigation and that they would see everything after the fact-finding phase was completed.

Exactly two weeks later Mr. Gongadze's widow and Maj. Melnychenko were granted political asylum by the U.S. after each individually requested it. While the U.S. Secretary of State spokesman Richard Boucher attempted to blunt an angry response from Ukraine regarding the decision, which was announced on April 16, by explaining that it had not been a political action but a separate procedure by the Immigration and Naturalization Service approved after a review of the merits of the two individual requests "based on standard international practice and international procedures and criteria," the Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Ministry wasn't buying it. "[The U.S. decision] is viewed by Ukraine as failing to correspond to the spirit of the Ukrainian American partnership and as creating obstacles in the way of a criminal investigation," the Foreign Affairs Ministry stated in an official release.

After arriving in Washington with her twin daughters on April 22, Ms. Gongadze said during a news conference organized by Freedom House at the National Press Club that she would continue to crusade for press freedom and democracy in Ukraine. "No matter where I find myself, in Kyiv, Warsaw, Washington or Strasbourg, I will always be working to help Ukraine become a normal country," said Ms. Gongadze.

The Council of Europe once again threatened Ukraine with not resolving allegations of human rights abuses and curtailment of basic freedoms, when the monitoring committee that analyzes Ukraine's compliance with PACE requirements recommended on April 5 that the country be suspended by the larger assembly at the next general session. The committee's report listed a litany of complaints, particularly against the Office of the President, including possible complicity in murder, harassment and violence against journalists, and unacceptably long delays in the Gongadze investigation.

The situation around the identity of the Tarascha corpse was still further muddled when the U.S. forensic team of FBI experts that finally had returned to Kyiv to complete its analysis ascertained that the headless Tarascha corpse did in fact belong to the deceased journalist, contradicting the German DNA analysis, but supporting the findings of the Russian forensic analysis.

Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs re-sensationalized the case on May 15-16 when its top cop and second in command issued varying stories in successive days claiming that the Gongadze murder had been solved.

First the new minister, Yurii Smirnov, told journalists that two bodies found in a common grave were believed to belong to the murderers. He said his investigators had made the connection when they found detailed maps of the burial site of the young journalist in the common grave. He said that several other individuals who were involved, including an underworld figure known as Cyclops, had been arrested. He would not give any further details.

The next day, Minister Smirnov's first deputy, Mykola Dzhyha, said at a law enforcement conference in Tbilisi that the Gongadze case was a simple act of banditry that had gone awry. He told a Russian press service that Mr. Gongadze had hitchhiked home and that those who picked him up were drug addicts in need of money and a fix. When the journalist tussled with them, they killed him and then drove the body to Tarascha where they buried it.

The Procurator General's Office immediately rejected the two conclusions as being premature and outside the competency of the individuals. Several days later Minister Smirnov told journalists that they had misunderstood him; that he had merely been presenting a personal theory and not an official version of events. Mr. Dzhyha never did withdraw his remarks, nor did he explain why addicts in need of a fix would take the time to drive a body 75 miles outside of Kyiv and then bury it.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe recognized Mr. Gongadze's efforts in fighting for press freedoms, human rights and democracy on July 10 when it awarded him the OSCE Prize for Journalism and Democracy. He shared the award with Jose Luis Lopez De Lacalle, a reporter for the Spanish daily newspaper El Mundo who was killed in May 2000 by the Basque separatist group ETA. The award and half the $20,000 prize were presented to Mr. Gongadze's wife, Myroslava.

The FBI became further involved in the Gongadze case on September 17 when the Procurator General's Office announced that the U.S. law enforcement agency would be involved in consultations with corresponding Ukrainian agencies. The announcement came a day after the first anniversary of the journalist's disappearance, an event marked on Independence Square in Kyiv, where some 3,000 people gathered for a requiem service and a rally meant to reinvigorate the anti-Kuchma movement, that had largely lain dormant since the end of spring, called for the impeachment of President Kuchma and for justice in the Gongadze case.

Other forces were moving to put the affair in the past.

Kroll Associates, a private U.S. detective agency that had been hired by the Labor Ukraine Party, which is very close to President Kuchma, to do a separate investigation into the Gongadze affair and the tape scandal issued a 50-page report on September 25 in which it concluded that nothing existed to suggest a link between the president and the Internet journalist. "There is no conclusive evidence to show that President Kuchma ordered or was otherwise involved in the murder of Heorhii Gongadze," stated the report. Kroll Associates also found in the course of its seven-month investigation that the manner in which the recordings were claimed to be made was dubious and their authenticity questionable.

Then, on September 28, the Procurator General's Office announced that it had officially cleared Mr. Kuchma and other state officials of any complicity in the Gongadze murder. In a letter to the late journalist's mother, Assistant Procurator General Bahanets said his office had looked in to the actions of President Kuchma, Chief of Staff Lytvyn and ex-Minister of Internal Affairs Kravchenko and found all allegations against them to be false.

While movement in Ukraine to shut the door on the Gongadze affair continued, in Strasbourg, home of PACE, an effort was made to keep alive the chance for an impartial, transparent and fair investigation. PACE and the media support organization Reporters Without Borders announced the same day the Kroll findings were made public that they would work to organize an independent commission to investigate the case of the murdered journalist. With Mr. Gongadze's widow present, PACE rapporteur Ms. Severinsen said she had asked European Union member-states to provide law enforcement experts to investigate the matter further and more fully.

Another mishandled attempt to show that the Gongadze case had been resolved, if not solved, occurred on November 15 when Valerii Pustovoitenko, Ukraine's former prime minister and current minister of transportation, announced he had obtained specific details on the murder of the controversial journalist and knew the names of the perpetrators.

Mr. Pustovoitenko, who is also the chairman of the National Democratic Party, said he had received information from the Moscow-based Agency for Journalistic Research, which earlier this year had announced in Kyiv that it would conduct an independent investigation into the disappearance of the Georgian-born and Lviv-raised Ukrainian journalist. "I have a report regarding the Gongadze matter, which I have hidden in three separate vaults," said Mr. Pustovoitenko. "I will not reveal it because I have no proof that it occurred as written. Now, however, I understand a lot of the positions taken in this matter."

He explained at the time that he understood that only the Procurator General's Office had the legal authority and responsibility to investigate the Gongadze affair, and that the information gathered by the Moscow research agency could only be useful at the moment as guiding information subject to analysis.

Prosecutor General Potebenko responded harshly on November 26, when he said that Mr. Pustovoitenko would either have to offer details or apologize for the lie. President Kuchma took a more nuanced approach to the matter when he said on November 23 that Mr. Pustovoitenko had made his statement for political effect. "In fact, he does not and did not have anything," said Mr. Kuchma.

As the year ended, Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada officially turned to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, asking it to proceed with an independent investigation, which the European human rights body offered to sponsor. Meanwhile the Tarascha body remained without a funeral and the mystery behind who killed a young Ukrainian journalist and why remained unresolved.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 6, 2002, No. 1, Vol. LXX

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