Ukraine tries top official over journalist's murder

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A former senior Ukrainian official went on trial on Thursday on charges of murdering critical journalist Georgy Gongadze in 2000, the most notorious crime in the country's post-Soviet history.

Olexy Pukach, the former head of the Ukrainian interior ministry's intelligence bureau, is the highest-ranking official yet to face trial over the brutal murder of Gongadze, 31, in a forest outside Kiev.

His closed-door trial coincides with a surge in interest in the case after prosecutors charged former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma with involvement in the murder after years of pressure from the journalist's supporters.

The trial got underway at the Pechersky district court in Kiev under tight secrecy with none of the media massed outside allowed in the courtroom.

Valentina Telechenko, the representative of Gongadze's widow, confirmed to the press that on Thursday's preliminary hearing was closed to the public and it was likely that that the same conditions would apply to further hearings.

Pukach was arrested in July 2009 and prosecutors have said he has confessed to personally strangling Gongadze, who founded the still highly respected Ukrainian news site Ukrainska Pravda.

Ukraine in March 2008 sentenced three former officials from the interior ministry intelligence department — Valeriy Kostenko, Mykola Protasov and Olexander Popovych — to terms of 12 to 13 years in prison for carrying out the killing.

But even after their former chief Pukach was finally arrested in 2009, Gongadze's supporters continued to argue that the murder had been ordered at an even higher level.

They point to tapes recorded by a former bodyguard of Kuchma and made public in 2000 where voices alleged to be of the former President and his former chief of staff Volodymyr Lytvyn are heard speaking about eliminating Gongadze.

Crucially, prosecutors have now ruled that the tapes are admissible evidence.

The tapes, whose publication at the time prompted mass protests in Ukraine, contain a voice resembling that of Kuchma suggesting to have Gongadze "kidnapped by Chechens".

Mystery also still surrounds the death in March 2005 of the Yuriy Kravchenko, the interior minister at the time of the murder, who was found dead with two gunshots wounds in his head just as he was about to be interrogated in the case.

According to the official version, Kravchenko committed suicide. But opposition Ukrainian media have long speculated over possible foul play.