The human remains found November 3 near Tarashcha, Kyiv oblast, which some eyewitness journalists claim may be those of Heorhy Gongadze, provoked events without precedent. As all the electronic media, including the state-run UT-1, have already reported, on November 15 a group of the missing journalist’s colleagues, including editor of the Ukrayinska pravda Internet newspaper Olena Prytula, television producer Lavrenty Malazoniya, TSN (1+1 TV) hostess Liudmyla Dobrovolska, and a UP journalist Koba Alania, “in line with the information they had, decided to check the police claim that the corpse found in Tarashcha district, Kyiv oblast, is not the body of Gongadze” (quoted from an Interfax-Ukraine report). The journalists visited last Wednesday the Bila Tserkva forensic medicine facility, where they were shown the remains.
According to Olena PRYTULA, it was impossible to visually identify the body, for it was headless. Commenting on this to The Day, Liudmyla DOBROVOLSKA quotes Ihor Vorotyntsev, a Bila Tserkva forensic medical expert, as saying that the body was treated with chemicals perhaps in order to speed up the processes of decomposition.
The expert described to the journalists a silver bracelet found on the body, as well as a talisman and ring Heorhy usually wore. The journalists are sure these things belonged to him.
An expert’s X-ray made upon the insistence of the journalists in their presence revealed what forensic experts think are metal fragments imbedded in the flesh. They might be splinters of a grenade. It is common knowledge Gongadze received splinter wounds in the hands when he was covering the Abkhazia conflict.
The expert also told the visitors the body, buried about one meter deep, had been found on the evening of November 3 in the Tarashcha woodland thirty meters away from the road. The exhumation was attended by the public prosecutor of Kyiv oblast, Ukraine’s chief forensic medical officer, and district police captains. Later, the metallic objects found were allegedly taken together with the forensic medical examination report to Kyiv.
Then came the events that defy any explanation. According to Ms. Dobrovolska, the forensic medical worker suggested that they take the body. All they had to do, in his words, was to sign the official identification report. When this was done in the Tarashcha prosecutor’s office, local police confirmed they could take the body. And most incomprehensibly medical-legal expert Vorotyntsev gave the journalists a certificate of Gongadze’s death. Tarashcha district police chief Valeyev, said he was to have brought the body to Kyiv The Day before, but there was no car. Ms. Dobrovolska said the district police authorities did not mind the body being taken by the journalists.
“However, while we were looking for a coffin and a car in which to transport the remains to Kyiv, the corpse was snatched from the morgue by persons unknown and taken to an unknown destination. Neither the Tarashcha prosecutors nor the police could explain to us why the body had disappeared,” Ms. Prytula told Interfax-Ukraine.
Late on November 15, when the journalists came back to Kyiv and got in touch with the investigator of the Gongadze case, the latter soon told them not to worry because the remains were kept in a place known to the law enforcement bodies. Simultaneously, Heorhy’s wife, Myroslava, got a phone call from the city criminal inquest department, inviting her to come on November 16 to identify the body. However, as we know, there was no official identification of the remains and the objects found on both the fifteenth and sixteenth.
“I can’t find an explanation to why the body, which was found on November 3 and could be of interest to the law enforcement bodies in connection with Gongadze’s disappearance, should have been hidden from his kith and kin,” Prytula said on Thursday morning.
Information about this event was placed on the Ukrayinska pravda site and went on the air last Wednesday night. On Thursday, during parliament’s morning session, People’s Deputy Anatoly Matviyenko demanded information on journalist Gongadze’s allegedly found body and its disappearance from the morgue. Responding to the proposal to hear the ad hoc parliamentary commission investigating the journalist’s disappearance Speaker Ivan Pliushch said this hearing was scheduled for Friday and then formally instructed Internal Affairs Minister Yuri Kravchenko to prepare and make public existing information on the identification of Heorhy Gongadze’s body (? — Ed.) the same Thursday.
As to the law enforcement bodies, at 10 a.m. both the Prosecutor General’s press service and the Internal Affairs Ministry public relations department confirmed they would not comment on the Interfax-Ukraine report because they had no information. But in the afternoon Interfax- Ukraine released a report that First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Mykola Dzhyha had admitted that they possessed the remains found near Tarashcha but that examination results would only be known a week later.
Then, according to Interfax-Ukraine, Mr. Dzhyha said in Verkhovna Rada that the unidentified body was kept at the oblast forensic medical bureau on Oranzhereina Street. A very authoritative commission headed by Ukraine’s chief forensic medical expert Yuri Shupik visited the Tarashcha site, Mr. Dzhyha said, and “nobody will say this is the corpse of Gongadze” until a comprehensive forensic examination (chemical, biological, histological, and DNA analyses) has been officially completed. He said the examination results can only be known in a week. He also confirmed there were metal objects found on the body and now being studied. “After the forensic examination results are known, they (the objects) will be presented to the wife for identification,” the first deputy minister said. Later that day, parliament was to hear Yuri Kravchenko, Ukraine’s Minister of Internal Affairs.
Deputy Internal Affairs Minister Volodymyr Melnykov, said at a ministry press conference that it is too early to come to any conclusions concerning the death of Gongadze while there is no official document testifying that the body found in Tarashcha district belongs to him. Such a document can be only issued by the forensic expert personally responsible for the authenticity of the autopsy. As to the death certificate given to Olena Prytula, Mr. Melnykov said only the prosecutor investigating a case can allow such documents to be issued. Police officers are not authorized to issue such documents and permissions. Mr. Melnykov declined to comment on how the charm, which might have belonged to Gongadze, was found on the body.
In addition, Mr. Melnykov confirmed that the body had indeed been found on November 3 and a separate criminal case had been opened to this effect.
PS
On November 17 Leonid Kuchma stated that he like no one else is looking forward to Hryhory Gongadze’s disappearance case being closed, reports Interfax-Ukraine.
“One won’t bury a man before his time as was done yesterday,” Kuchma stated. “I have no idea who could benefit from yesterday’s mischief. To say that the discovered body is that of Gongadze is to assume responsibility.” However, in his opinion, such responsibility can be assumed only by forensics.
Deputy Prosecutor General Serhiy Vynokurov stated that the issue of the death certificate on Hryhory Gongadze’s demise should be investigated, since “the forensic expert (of the Tarashcha region — Ed.) has no right to issue such a certificate, and presently it is being analyzed why this happened before the final results of the forensic examination came in.” Oleksandr Lavrynovych, the head of the Verkhovna Rada investigating commission on the Gongadze case, reported Friday in Parliament. He expressed dissatisfaction with the information the commission had received from law enforcement. While discussing the report, the deputies condemned the enforcement for bungling the Tarashcha case and seconded the report items.
Thus, we have not received an answer to one of the major questions: why law enforcement, having confirmed that together with the body certain metal objects have been discovered, and not disclaiming the alleged similarity of the latter to Hryhory Gongadze’s personal jewelry, still failed to conduct their identification procedure by relatives and friends of the disappeared journalist? Let alone their failure to announce when the body discovered in the Tarashcha was delivered to Kyiv for examination. Such reticence by law enforcement calls into question their perhaps quite professional and justified actions. After all, is this our ordinary sluggishness or something else?
