TIMELINE: The Gongadze case
September 16, 2000
- Enterprising journalist Heorhii Gongadze leaves the home of Ukrayinska
Pravda editor Olena Prytula and disappears.
November 2, 2000
- A body believed to be Gongadze's is found in a forest in the Tarascha
region of the Kyiv Oblast.
November 28, 2000
- Socialist Party Chair Oleksander Moroz plays the Melnychenko recordings
for the Verkhovna Rada, containing voices resembling those of top government
leaders, discussing Gongadze and his fate.
April 26, 2001
- U.S. Armed Forces experts from the Institute of Pathology confirm the
body found in the Tarascha forest is Gongadze's. That same month the U.S.
government grants Mykola Melnychenko political asylum.
July 6, 2002
- President Kuchma appoints Sviatoslav Piskun as procurator general.
Three days earlier he promised to complete an investigation into Gongadze's
murder within six months.
July 11, 2002
- The Verkhovna Rada appoints an ad hoc investigation commission on the
Gongadze case, which is chaired by National Deputy Hryhorii Omelchenko.
October 23, 2003
- Gen. Oleksii Pukach is arrested and accused of eliminating documents
that could have proved a special department was created in the Internal
Affairs Ministry to shadow Gongadze. Two weeks later a Kyiv appeals court
releases Mr. Pukach, who flees to Israel soon afterwards.
March 1, 2005
- President Viktor Yushchenko announces the arrest of those suspected
in carrying out Gongadze's murder.
March 4, 2005
- Former Internal Affairs Minister Kravchenko is found dead at his home
the day he was scheduled to testify as a witness at the Procurator General's
Office. Police conclude he shot himself, despite the fact that there are
two bullet wounds to his head.
August 1, 2005
- The Procurator General's Office announces the completion of the first
phase of the Gongadze inquiry, consisting of the investigation and arrest
of those who committed the murder.
September 20, 2005
- National Deputy Omelchenko reads his commission's report in the Verkhovna
Rada and accuses Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn, among others,
of complicity in the Gongadze murder.
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, October
2, 2005, No. 40, Vol. LXXIII
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