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Prosecutor says death of key figure in Gongadze murder case unrelated, calls it "suicide" despite expert's testimony otherwise

(IMI/IFEX) - The following is a statement from IMI, an interim member of IFEX:

GPO closes case of Kravchenko death, key witness in Gongadze case

The General Prosecutor Office has closed the investigation on the violent death of former minister of internal affairs Yuriy Kravchenko, a key figure in the Gyorgy Gongadze case, Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko told a press conference in Kyiv on 28 February 2007.

"Within the criminal case instituted over the fact of death of Kravchenko, the decision was taken to close the criminal case as there is no corpus delicti", Medvedko said. "The investigator concluded this was not a murder."

Previously, Mykola Polyshchuk, former minister of public health and a well-known specialist who is author of the monograph "Firearm injuries of the central nervous system", had claimed that Kravchenko was unable to shoot himself.

"Viewing the kinds of injury, as recorded in the documents, one can state unequivocally this was a forced death. These injuries could not be produced by the same person. The eventuality of an aleatory shot must be excluded," Polychshuk said.

Kravchenko was found dead in his country house in Koncha-Zaspa, in Kyiv region, on 4 March 2005 after General Prosecutor Svyatoslav Piskun summoned him to testify in the Gongadze case. Kravchenko had two gunshot wounds in his cranium. According to the official police version, Kravchenko shot himself. He was a key witness as his voice was recorded on cassette tapes by former security officer Nikolai Melnichenko, who claimed he received orders from then president Leonid Kuchma to eliminate Gongadze, the editor-in-chief of the online newspaper pravda.com, before the journalist was kidnapped and eventually found decapitated on 2 November 2000.