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No changes planned to Gongadze case investigation team

30.07.2009    source: www.pravda.com.ua
The Prosecutor General has decided not to change the team investigating the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze which had been demanded by Georgy’s widow, Myroslava Gongadze and her lawyer Valentina Telychenko.

The Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko has decided not to change the team investigating the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze which had been demanded by Georgy’s widow, Myroslava Gongadze and her lawyer Valentina Telychenko.

The Prosecutor General’s Office [PGO] Press Service stated that this was because “no grounds were given” in the application submitted by Ms Telychenko to have two people removed from the investigation team: Oleksandr Kharchenko and Deputy Prosecutor General Mykola Holomsha.

Ms Telychenko told Ukrainska Pravda that she had thus far not received an official response from PGO. “If their answer is negative this will mean that the Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko is acceding to all the political speculation which Mykola Holomsha (the head of the team) is resorting to and misleading the public”, she stated.

She cited as an example the statements from Holomsha that he “had been on General Oleksy Pukach’s track for two years and knew where he was”.

At the same time she stressed that cooperation between the victim’s family and the investigation team was extremely important and that she would do everything to ensure that such cooperation was constructive. “However it is very difficult to work with the unprofessional leadership of the investigation unit.”

Ms Telychenko said that she had already prepared several applications to the Prosecutor General’s Office, one concerning a genoscopic examination of the remains of what may have been Georgy Gongadze’s skull abroad due to distrust of Ukrainian experts.  She also stress that “a refusal to remove the heads of the investigation unit indicates an attempt by the Prosecutor General to pass the case to court confining himself to the charges against Oleksay Pukach, thus making it impossible to uncover those who ordered the killing”.

She pointed out that “the international community will never understand such a step”.

Ms Telychenko had insisted on the removal of the above-mentioned members of the investigation unit and asked that control over the investigation be carried out by Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaly Shchotkin.

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