German analysis raises questions about Tarascha corpse (03/25/01)

German analysis raises questions about Tarascha corpse

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Another unforeseen twist further complicated efforts to determine who killed Heorhii Gongadze when on March 19 National Deputy Serhii Holovatyi, secretary of the ad hoc parliamentary committee investigating the Gongadze affair, announced that DNA testing of what was believed to be a sample tissue of the remains of the missing journalist had turned up negative.

"The material from a corpse that was handed over by Olena Prytula is not part of the remains of the body of Heorhii Gongadze," said Mr. Holovatyi.

Ms. Prytula, the colleague of the murdered journalist who was the editor-in-chief of the Internet newspaper he published before he disappeared in mid-September 2000, had turned over to Mr. Holovatyi tissue samples that she believed belonged to the corpse of her missing boss.

Ms. Prytula first identified what are considered his remains in a morgue in the town of Tarascha on November 15 of last year. She received the sample from the local medical examiner after the body suddenly disappeared during the several hours it took her to obtain a vehicle to transport the body she had just identified. The piece of bone and soft tissue were part of what remained of a partial autopsy. The body later turned up at the Kyiv morgue of the Procurator General's Office. No explanation has ever been given for how and why the corpse was moved.

What made the announcement so stunning is that it came after a similar analysis conducted by a Russian firm in February, which made a completely different finding. That examination, which was ordered by the Ukrainian Procurator General's Office, but only after much pressure from lawmakers and the public, found a 99.6 percent probability that the remains of the Tarascha corpse were that of the missing journalist. Government officials said the tissue sample used in the Moscow analysis, which was done by a noted expert on DNA identification, was from the Tarascha body. However, Procurator General Mykhailo Potebenko refused to certify the results because he believed that level of probability was inconclusive. After further testing raised the likelihood to 99.9 percent, Mr. Potebenko recognized the results.

The analysis commissioned by the ad hoc committee of the Verkhovna Rada investigating the Gongadze affair, which was done by a German firm, Geneida of Munich, compared a splotch of blood found on a medical card belonging to the late journalist and blood taken from his mother, Lesia Gongadze, with the tissue samples submitted by Ms. Prytula.

The results showed that the blood on the medical card belongs to the offspring of Mrs. Gongadze but that the tissue sample from the corpse is not related to either.

Ms. Prytula said she was shocked by the result and explained that she does not exclude the possibility that the tissue sample, which had been in her refrigerator in the weeks before it was turned over to Mr. Holovatyi, could have been replaced by someone who had secretly entered her apartment.

"This whole time the fragments were kept in my apartment, where I am only early in the morning and late at night," explained Ms. Prytula in an article published in her Internet publication, Ukrainska Pravda.

Mr. Holovatyi gave a second theory for how differing results could have occurred from ostensibly the same corpse. He offered that it is possible to mask DNA identification by contaminating the tissue sample with genetic material from a foreign source, such as blood from another person. He suggested that the Moscow test could have been contaminated in that way.

In a grizzly warning, the Ukrainian lawmaker, who has been a vocal critic of the presidential administration for years, also said that a close relative of the murdered journalist may be in imminent danger from those who may need more DNA matter to continue to confuse medical experts.

National Deputy Oleksander Lavrynovych, the head of the parliamentary ad hoc committee, said that in all likelihood his committee would accept the findings of the Munich analysis, but that he has serious doubts whether the tissue samples came from the Tarascha body.

He explained that the way the materials were handled prior to being delivered to the experts in Munich "made the results questionable from the beginning."

Mr. Lavrynovych suggested that Mr. Holovatyi had improperly handled the materials from a scientific and official point of view. He explained that Ms. Prytula had turned the samples over to Valerii Ivasiuk, a doctor who is a close friend of Mr. Holovatyi. They were then passed on to the commission and accepted by Mykola Boltivets, its head administrator, and two committee members, Viktor Shyshkyn and Mr. Holovatyi.

Mr. Holovatyi, during his press conference announcing the results of the Munich analysis, said the decision to have an independent DNA examination performed came from a 6-0 vote of the 15-member committee on December 26, 2000. Two members abstained, including Mr. Lavrynovych, and seven were absent.

Myroslava Gongadze, the spouse of the missing journalist, told The Ukrainian Weekly on March 22 that neither Mr. Holovatyi nor the parliamentary committee had informed her separately of the results and therefore she did not feel qualifed to comment on them. She said, however, that she was bothered by a whole series of decisions and actions that have been carried out, which could cast doubt on the legitimacy of the parliamentary investigation.

"I said from the beginning that all the things that are done must be done on the basis of legitimate procedures. I am irritated by the fact that everybody is seeking to make a name for themselves," explained Ms. Gongadze.

Meanwhile, the press center of the Procurator General's Office said on March 20 that the German results had no legal force and could not be submitted as evidence in a Ukrainian court of law.

On March 21 President Leonid Kuchma said he had again requested that the FBI send experts to do "a complex analysis of the Tarascha body along with Russian and German experts." He said the FBI had failed to perform an analysis the last time its representatives were in Kyiv, reported Interfax-Ukraine.

Iryna Lawrin contributed to this report.

| Home Page |