Myroslava Gongadze calls on Moroz to talk to Prosecutor General

In an interview given to Radio Svoboda, the widow of murdered journalist Georgy Gongadze said that the leader of the Socialist Party Oleksandr Moroz should pass on information about the murder of her husband to the Prosecutor General. According to Myroslava Gongadze, after hearing the words on Mykola Melnychenko’s tapes made in the office of the then President Leonid Kuchma, she had had no doubts that he had been speaking of Georgy with the words: “it means taking him to the forest, giving to the Chechens the fact that he said that in his office.”

Myroslava Gongadze stressed that the question of a link between what the President said and the specific implementation had to be established by the criminal investigators.

“If Oleksandr Moroz now has some kind of additional information about this link and whether Kuchma ordered the killing, then I think that it is his duty to go to the Prosecutor General and present this information. And it is the duty of the investigators to summon Oleksandr Moroz and put very specific questions to him. It looks as though for the last 8 years he has had some special information which at present neither the victim’s family nor the investigators are aware of”.

She added that she had again given testimony to the Prosecutor General’s Office but on the subject of the investigation into who ordered the killing, said: “I cannot give an assessment since I don’t know what the Prosecutor General’s Office is doing. I have been given no information about the cause of the investigation and I do not have access to the case files. I have stressed some aspects which I believe it’s necessary to check in the case. I hope that something will be done. Over the last two years we have had no results from the investigation into those who ordered the crime although the investigator claims that a lot has been done.

Moroz retracts his accusations against Kuchma

Ms Gongadze’s interview was prompted by the statements made the day before by Oleksandr Moroz, former Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada and Head of the Socialist Party of Ukraine. In them he asserted that he had never accused Leonid Kuchma of ordering Gongadze’s killing. Moroz stated that the investigators should answer all questions using the Melnychenko takes in the case.

Eight years ago, Oleksandr Moroz said: “Ukraine’s President Leonid Kuchma is person who ordered it and who systematically monitored the implementation of his instructions”.

Former Prosecutor General Sviastoslav Piskun who was in office when most progress was made in the investigation asserts that Kuchma’s part in the murder of the journalist has not been proven.

Georgy Gongadze disappeared on 16 September 2000.

Based on an interview at www.radiosvoboda.org