The Gongadze case has taken a new scandalous turn. People’s Deputy Serhiy Holovaty stated on March 20 that the German experts believe the body samples provided by Ukrayinska pravda editor Olena Prytula do not belong to any person that could possibly be Lesia Gongadze’s son, reports Interfax Ukraine.
Serhiy Holovaty announced that Germany’s Genedia Laboratory for Molecular Biological Forensic Examination ran genotyposcopical tests on samples taken from the body found at Tarashcha and conveyed by Prytula, a spot of dried blood on Heorhy Gongadze’s medical history card, and a sample of the journalist’s mother Lesia Gongadze’s blood. The German experts, the lawmaker stressed, succeeded in extracting DNA from all three samples. “A comparative analysis of the blood on Heorhy’s history card and Lesia Gongadze’s blood sample reveals identical alleles — in other words, DNA,” he said.
However, the body sample supplied to the parliamentary commission and the dry blood on the history card do not contain DNA originating from the same person, Mr. Holovaty stressed. Thus, the general public (not the authorities that are obviously in possession of far more systemic data and better understanding of what is happening) has actually returned to the starting point where it was in November, after the strange case of the Tarashcha body was brought into the open. (After being discovered on November 3, the body was kept at the Tarashcha morgue until November 15 when the authorities first formally allowed the missing journalist’s colleagues to take the body and then the body vanished, later allegedly discovered at Kyiv’s forensic morgue; at the time, the investigation was kept out of the public eye, law enforcement officials came up with controversial statements, and Gongadze’s relatives were barred access to the body. As a result, no one knows even now whether the Russian expert findings identifying the body as that of Gongadze with a 99.9% probability relate to the body found at Tarashcha, nor do we know the date or cause of death of the remains identified as those of Heorhy Gongadze.).
On the other hand, we do not know what samples the German experts used. They had been supplied to Volodymyr Ivasiuk and Serhiy Holovaty by Gongadze’s colleague Olena Prytula who had been among those visiting Tarashcha in November. While Prytula does not rule out the possibility of the samples she brought from Tarashcha and kept at her apartment (and she says she left early in the morning and returned late in the evening. See Ukrayinska pravda, March 20, 2001) being replaced, the sample could have been tampered with at any stage, the more so that Oleksandr Lavrynovych, chairman of the Verkhovna Rada ad hoc committee of inquiry into Gongadze case, told The Day that Olena Prytula had not delivered any samples to the committee, and that the German expert examination is Valery Ivasiuk’s personal business, as the latter has nothing to do with the committee. In addition, Lavrenty Malazonia, who personally received from Tarashcha forensic expert Ihor Vorotyntsev samples allegedly taken from the body discovered at Tarashcha, testifies that the samples were collected after the body had mysteriously vanished from the Tarashcha morgue. This means that Mr. Vorotyntsev’s words are the only evidence that the samples actually belong to the body found at Tarashcha and later identified as belonging to Gongadze.
As a result, depending on whether or not Serhiy Holovaty’s statement and German expert findings are officially acknowledged, the public is left with too many questions casting doubt on what the authorities are doing. This means that a completely transparent and independent forensic medical examination is in order. The law enforcement authorities seem to have agreed to such an examination of all the available samples involving FBI experts and to answering the questions being posed, mainly concerning the date and cause of death, which is something Lesia Gongadze is particularly insistent upon.
This is the only way clarify to at least some extent the case that has triggered off such a serious political crisis in Ukraine. Under the circumstances, considering the way the interested parties behave in this conflict lasting months, either party might want it to take a course that will run counter to the interests of society.
