About IFEX:

News by region:

IFEX Campaigns and Advocacy:

IFEX Email Products:

Opportunities and assistance:

Alert

Authorities "shed light on" journalist Georgiy Gongadze's assassination

(RSF/IFEX) - RSF has expressed its dismay following the Ukranian Ministry of the Interior's 15 May 2001 announcement that the bodies of journalist Georgiy Gongadze's two assassins were found and that the matter was "henceforth explained."




"The ridiculousness of this announcement is only matched by its pure cynicism," stated Robert Ménard, the organisation's secretary-general. "We are being told at the same time that there is no one behind the murder, that those who carried out the murder are dead, and that the murder was a 'spontaneous act' on their part! Now that the 'assassins of the assassins' of Georgiy Gongadze are behind bars, can we hope to receive more information about this development? Unless they are in turn assassinated! We solemnly ask Ukranian judicial and political authorities to agree to shed full light on this terrible case, which will weigh heavily on Ukraine as long as all the details are not fully explained," added Ménard.

Ukrainian Minister of the Interior Yuri Smirnov announced on 15 May that Gongadze's two presumed assassins were dead. "The two persons who carried out the murder died and there is no one behind the journalist's murder since it was a spontaneous act," the minister stated, as quoted by the Interfax agency. "As minister, I believe that the crime was explained fully and that it is not of a political nature," he added. The previous evening, President Leonid Kutchma, interviewed by the Russian station ORT, did not exclude the possibility that the crime was politically motivated. In late April, the Ministry of the Interior had announced "new testimony" by persons who reportedly saw Gongadze, alive, in the Czech Republic. FBI experts then confirmed that the decapitated corpse found on 2 November 2000 near Kiev was indeed Gongadze's.