Gongadze family lawyer unimpressed

Following the news widely broadcast yesterday that investigators had possibly found the remains of murdered journalist Georgy Gongadze’s skull, Valentina Telychenko who is representing Georgy’s widow, Myroslava Gongadze, has spoken to the media about progress in the case.

She told Deutsche Welle that the discovery should not be overestimated, and that it was important primarily from the moral point of view, as being the remains of Georgy Gongadze. It did not have major legal significance and did not make the actual crime any clearer. That is, it did not facilitate establishing who ordered the crime, and who, besides Pukach, organized it. Nor did it help to ascertain who had taken part in reburying the body and in hiding Pukach from justice.

Ms Telychenko is certain that Myroslava Gongadze will insist on a forensic examination of the skull, and will trust only foreign experts.

She is also convinced that the present investigative team within the Prosecutor General’s Office is not capable of efficiently bringing the case against Oleksy Pukach to court.

She has already found infringements of the law in Pukach’s first interrogation. She does not believe that this arrest guarantees the full solving of the crime and expects Pukach to mislead the investigation and give false testimony since most of the witnesses are no longer alive.

“As this is a high-profile and important case, it becomes especially vital to do everything accurately and in accordance with criminal procedure. I’m therefore outraged by the sloppiness of the Prosecutor General’s Office in questioning Pukach immediately after his arrest and without a lawyer. And he supposedly agreed to give evidence without a lawyer”, she said.

Ms Telychenko notes that there is already a lot of political speculation around the arrest of General Pukach and therefore the trial will not be in less than six months. “At the moment I see a danger that the investigation will be carried out shoddily. Then we’ll get low-quality material at the trial and will have to extract evidence during the hearings. All of that will drag out the case.” She stressed that their oly demand was that the law was scrupulously observed.

From reports at www.dw-world.de