Replies

Via AP

Ukraine's Ex-Interior Minister Found Dead

Updated 5:50 AM ET March 4, 2005

By MARA D. BELLABY

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - Ukraine's former interior minister was found dead of an apparent suicide Friday, just before he was to meet with prosecutors for questioning about the 2000 slaying of an investigative journalist, officials said.

Yuri Kravchenko had been implicated in organizing the killing of Heorhiy Gongadze, who investigated corruption at the highest levels of the Ukrainian government.

President Viktor Yushchenko said Kravchenko's death could be linked to the probe into Gongadze's slaying and ordered Interior Minister Yury Lutsenko and the Prosecutor General Svyatoslav Piskun to take the investigation under personal control.

"The investigation must be conducted in a transparent and professional manner and in full accordance with law," Yushchenko said in a written statement Friday.

A spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry, Inna Kisel, said Kravchenko's death was an apparent suicide, and Ukraine's TV5 reported that the 54-year-old former police official shot himself at his country residence in an exclusive enclave outside Kiev.

Gongadze was abducted in Kiev in September 2000, and his decapitated body was found months later buried in a forest outside the capital. His death sparked months of protests against former President Leonid Kuchma, who the opposition alleged had ordered the killing. Kuchma has denied any involvement.

The allegations against Kuchma were based on recordings that a former presidential bodyguard said were made secretly in Kuchma's office. In the tapes, Kuchma was overheard repeatedly complaining about Gongadze's reporting and ordering Kravchenko to "drive him out, throw (him) out, give him to the Chechens."

Volodymyr Lytvyn, Kuchma's former chief-of-staff, was also allegedly heard on the tapes saying: "In my opinion, let loose Kravchenko to use alternative methods."

Kuchma and his circle have disputed the authenticity of the tapes. Lytvyn, the current parliament speaker, dismissed the allegations in an earlier interview with The Associated Press, saying: "I wasn't brought up that way." He said Thursday he was ready to testify in connection with the case.

Yushchenko, who was elected in December, has said that solving Gongadze's slaying is a top task and a moral obligation of his government. He ordered investigators to move quickly.

On Wednesday, Piskun, the prosecutor general, said that investigators had identified all four people involved in Gongadze's slaying and knew who was the mastermind.

Two of the suspected killers were in custody, one was under orders not to leave Kiev and the fourth, senior police official Oleksiy Pukach, was wanted on an international warrant, Piskun said. All were employed by Ukraine's Interior Ministry.

Ukraine's Segodnya newspaper reported that Kravchenko had been put under official surveillance in December and ordered not to leave Ukraine.

Hryhoriy Omelchenko, a lawmaker who has repeatedly focused public attention on the need to solve Gongadze's slaying and arrest the masterminds, told The Associated Press that he had asked the prosecutor to detain Kravchenko more than a month ago.

"The arrest would have been a way to protect Kravchenko," he said. "If he had been arrested, he would be alive."

On Monday, a man identified as a key witness in the case, Yuriy Nesterov, was reportedly wounded when an unidentified assailant lobbed a hand-grenade at him. Another key witness, former police officer Ihor Honcharov, died in prison two years ago under suspicious circumstances. He had implicated Nesterov in kidnapping, torturing and killing Gongadze.