Ukrainian journalist Georgiy Gongadze (above) is believed to have been killed at the order of President Leonid Kuchma. Photo courtesy Ukrainska Pravda.
Posted on 03/01/2005 7:36:58 AM PST by TexKat
KIEV, Ukraine (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said Tuesday security forces had detained the killers of an investigative reporter whose murder in 2000 plunged his predecessor into a political crisis.
The discovery of the headless corpse of Internet reporter Georgiy Gongadze in a wood outside Kiev in 2000 undermined the reputation of then president Leonid Kuchma at home and abroad.
The unsolved murder became a rallying cry for liberals who staged mass protests in Kiev last year to help propel Yushchenko to victory in a December election.
"I can declare here that Gongadze's murder has been solved. The killers have been detained and are now giving evidence," Yushchenko said in a statement at a hastily arranged briefing.
"The former authorities not only lacked the political will to solve this murder. They covered up for the murderers."
Ukrainian media reported that three members of the security forces had been detained, but did not identify them. Neither the prosecutor general nor Ukraine's SBU security service offered any comment.
Yushchenko, finally elected in a re-run of a rigged poll, has repeatedly pledged since his inauguration in January to track down and punish those responsible for Gongadze's murder.
Kuchma repeatedly denied accusations by a former bodyguard, who covertly taped the president's conversations, that he had ordered the killing.
But no convincing evidence was ever presented of Kuchma's involvement and Kuchma easily survived a long series of protests launched in 2001 with the aim of pushing him out of office.
Reference articles: The Murder of Journalist Georgiy Gongadze
The journalist who changed Ukraine - BBC - Monday, 16 September, 2002
Ukrainian journalist Georgiy Gongadze (above) is believed to have been killed at the order of President Leonid Kuchma. Photo courtesy Ukrainska Pravda.
Why are the people who rallied for the candidate with western views called liberals?Communism is a leftist liberal movement not a conservative one but the media can't seem to call it like it is.
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