Yuri Shupik, Ukraine’s chief forensic medical expert, is quoted by Interfax Ukraine as saying that no experts in Ukraine will be able to ascertain the cause of death of the body discovered at Tarashcha, and that this is impossible “in world practice.” He made the statement before the parliamentary committee of inquiry into the Gongadze case on March 22. “There is nothing I can state with regard to the cause of death; anything may have caused it,” he said, but stressed that poisoning was out of the question: “We ran the tests; there was no trace of poisoning.” Mr. Shupik believes that the man, whose body was found at Tarashcha, had died a violent death. At the same time, the date of death could be established with as much precision as absolutely possible under the circumstances, considering the changes in the dead body. When asked whether he had informed Mykola Dzhyha about the body having spent the winter there, Mr. Shupik replied in the negative; he had supplied no information until the official forensic findings (Mykola Dzhyha declared from the parliamentary podium last November, referring to the chief forensic medical expert’s findings, that the body found at Tarashcha could not belong to Heorhy Gongadze for it had been there all winter).
