U.S. forensic team determines Tarascha corpse is Gongadze (05/13/01)

U.S. forensic team determines Tarascha corpse is Gongadze

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - DNA analysis by a U.S. forensic team has determined that a headless body found in a wooded area near the town of Tarascha in November of last year belongs to the missing journalist Heorhii Gongadze, UNIAN reported on May 7, citing "informed sources" in Washington. That report was confirmed the next day when the Embassy of the United States in Kyiv issued an official statement. (See text on page 3.)

The results support similar findings made by a Russian team in February, which reported a 99.9 percent degree of certainty that the body found in a shallow grave approximately 75 miles outside Kyiv belonged to Mr. Gongadze.

However, both results contradict an independent analysis done by a German firm of tissue samples provided by the journalist's colleague, Olena Prytula, which she claims to have taken from the body soon after it was discovered. The German DNA tests proved negative and have led to a belief that the tissue, which the journalist had kept in her refrigerator, was replaced without her knowledge.

Ms. Prytula is the editor-in-chief of the Internet newspaper created by Mr. Gongadze. Ukrainska Pravda, one of the first of this media in Ukraine, took a strongly oppositional stance to the current authorities in general and President Leonid Kuchma in particular.

Mr. Gongadze disappeared on September 16, 2000, after leaving Ms. Prytula's apartment. His disappearance and death led to a major political crisis in the upper echelons of Ukrainian power after audiotapes were discovered of intimate conversations between the president and his aides allegedly conspiring to get rid of the journalist.

There is uncertainty whether the Procurator General's Office will publicize the details of the U.S. forensic examination and analysis after it is received. U.S. officials have remained tight-lipped on their work, even as to what tests were done. By agreement with the Procurator General's Office, all results are to be turned over to the Ukrainian law enforcement agency without comment.

The journalist's widow, Myroslava, who received political asylum in the United States last month along with her twin daughters, age 3 1/2, once again criticized the handling of the case by the Procurator General's Office of Ukraine. In an interview with the popular Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza she stated that she did not think her husband's murder would be solved. She said she believed the law enforcement agency's apparent willingness to cooperate with U.S. forensic experts was merely an attempt by Ukrainian officials to create an illusion of transparency in the investigation.

Forensic experts from the FBI and the U.S. Department of Defense were in Kyiv on April 26-29 to gather materials from the Tarascha body. It was the second effort made by U.S. experts at the request of President Kuchma and the Procurator General's Office of Ukraine.

An earlier attempt to gather materials failed when both Mr. Gongadze's wife and mother refused to provide blood samples until Ukrainian law enforcement officials had agreed to a comprehensive analysis of the badly decomposed remains of the Tarascha body and not simply DNA testing.

U.S. specialists returned to Kyiv at the request of the Ukrainian government after the Procurator General's Office heeded the demands of the Gongadze family and allowed a complete set of tests to be done to determine not only the identity of the body, but also the manner and time of death.

The forensic experts spent approximately five hours examining the Tarascha body and gathering samples. Also present was Mr. Gongadze's mother, Lesia, who saw the body of her son for the first time. According to an article in Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, Mrs. Gongadze brought an old shoe once worn by her son to determine whether the size of the foot of the corpse matched her offspring's, not realizing to what extent it had deteriorated. In the article, written by Ms. Prytula, Mrs. Gongadze is said to have repeatedly muttered, "Why did they waste such a boy?"

The body that now appears to be that of the missing journalist has lain in a Kyiv morgue since it was quickly and unexpectedly moved from the local morgue in the town of Tarascha after Ms. Prytula and an associate, acting on a tip, found the corpse there and received preliminary confirmation from the local medical examiner that it was that of Mr. Gongadze. The medical examiner, who was interrogated and then muzzled by law enforcement officials from making public statements after the event, had been preparing to issue a death certificate and release the body to the journalist's colleagues several hours after they had positively identified it when he discovered it missing from his morgue.

There is general acknowledgment that determining anything more than the identity of the corpse will be difficult because the body is headless and now in such an advanced state of decay that little more than bones are left.

* * *

Mykola Dzhyha, first deputy minister of internal affairs, said his agency is not seriously considering political conspiracy in its investigation into the murder of Mr. Gongadze, according to the newspaper Fakty. He explained that investigators recently discovered two buried bodies, alongside which they found incontrovertible evidence linking the two to the death of Mr. Gongadze. He said an individual currently in custody supplied the information.

Mr. Dzhyha said he would not comment on the type of evidence found or the identity of either of the bodies or the detained individual until more analysis is done at the site of the discovery.

FOR THE RECORD: U.S. statement on ID of body

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