EDITORIAL: The Gongadze case resurfaces (07/11/04)

EDITORIAL

The Gongadze case resurfaces

The resurgence of international interest in the Gongadze affair sparked by the publication of several stories in the British newspaper The Independent only makes more credible the long-held suspicions that leading figures in Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs were complicit in the abduction and death of the young Ukrainian journalist and that the Procurator General's Office has been involved in a cover-up rather than in a criminal investigation of the matter. While nothing can be proven until an independent judicial inquiry of some sort takes place, there can now be no doubt that something is seriously amiss.

Mr. Gongadze, 31, was the founder of one of the Internet publication Ukrainska Pravda, who disappeared in September 2000. His beheaded corpse was found two months later. The affair has involved mysterious digital recordings made by a former security officer that implicate the current president, who maintains that they are conversations pasted together by experts hired by his enemies to form incriminating dialogue. Two international analyses of the recordings have shown them to be authentic.

In three recent stories The Independent asserted that it had received a treasure trove of startling new evidence that the top prosecutor's office was involved in a cover-up to protect Internal Affairs officials at the highest echelons. The Independent wrote that Ihor Honcharov, a self-admitted leader of a band of assassins with ties to both the state militia and criminal groups who claimed his gang participated in the Gongadze murder, died in prison from a fatal injection of a drug with no medicinal value. The newspaper also asserted that it had received separate documentation on how Gongadze died and has the names of those who took part in the murder.

While it is encouraging that The Independent has supportive evidence, most of this information is not new as it has been leaked or generally written about for months and years. Far from discounting the value of the information provided by The Independent, however, we are concerned with the more immediate role the stories could play in stimulating a case that has lain dormant over the last months.

It seems pretty clear now that the current authorities have no interest in solving the case - but only in shrouding the facts in more fog. The best chance for the truth to come out might exist along two routes: either wait for a new presidential administration to take office after the October 31 elections in the hope that the proper investigative and judicial processes will take place; or have international human rights groups do all they can to pressure Western countries to force Ukraine and its uncooperative leadership to come clean.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said recently that it remains skeptical that Ukrainian officials are serious about solving the case. Now the International Federation of Journalists is preparing to launch an inquiry into the Gongadze murder, calling it "a pivotal case for media freedom in Europe." We agree with the IFJ, even as we acknowledge that Ukraine's image has taken quite a bashing over the years. Unfortunately, the way the gruesome death of this journalist has been treated by Ukraine's authorities requires the international community to organize an extensive investigation at some level, even if it should turn out that state leaders were not complicit in either the disappearance or the death of Gongadze.

It is also time that the Gongadze family be allowed closure and for the Ukrainian nation to put this sorry chapter in its recent history behind it.

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