The death of Gen Edvard Fere, a potential key witness in the investigation into the disappearance and murder of online journalist Georgy Gongadze in 2000, has dealt a blow to the case. Fere died on Monday in hospital after six years in a coma without ever being questioned by the police.
Gen Fere, who fell into a coma after suffering a heart attack in 2003, acted as chief of staff for President Leonid Kuchma’s interior minister, Yuri Kravchenko, from 1995 to 2001. He was also a close associate of one of Gongadze’s presumed murderers, former interior ministry intelligence chief Gen Olexi Pukach, for whom an international arrest warrant has been issued.
“Gen Fere’s death is a serious blow for the investigation into the Gongadze murder but the judicial authorities have other ways to establish the truth,” Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. “We deplore the lack of political will to solve this murder that has so far been displayed by the Ukrainian authorities.”
A 31-year old investigative reporter who had often written often about corruption in President Kuchma’s government, Gongadze was abducted from his Kiev apartment building on September 16, 2000. A headless body and a skull found in a forest near Kiev six weeks later were eventually identified as his.
Gen Fere was suspected of being the intermediary between those who ordered Gongadze’s murder and those who organised its execution, including Gen Pukach. The prosecutor’s office had made three unsuccessful attempts to question him.
Three former police officers—Mykola Protasov, Oleksandr Popovich and Valeri Kostenko —were convicted last year of carrying out Gongadze’s murder on Gen Pukach’s orders. Their sentences, 13 years in prison for Protasov and 12 years in prison for the other two, have been confirmed by the supreme court. Gen Pukach is still a fugitive from justice and is believed to be abroad.
The prosecutor’s office is supposedly still pursuing a second phase of the investigation, consisting of identifying and prosecuting those who ordered Gongadze’s murder. Tape recordings made by the former president’s bodyguard, Mykola Melnishenko, which could compromise very senior former officials, are still awaiting formal examination by an expert.
