15:50 28.12.2012

Lawyer for Gongadze's widow supports prosecutor in need to sentence Pukach to life

2 min read

Valentyna Telychenko, the lawyer for Georgy Gongadze's widow, Myroslava Gongadze, has supported the prosecutor's opinion that the former chief of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's external surveillance department, Oleksiy Pukach, should be sentenced to life imprisonment.

"The state prosecutor, while speaking during the debates, asked for very serious and very significant punishment for a crime incriminated to Oleksiy Pukach - from 8 to 12 years in prison under articles that do not envisage murder and life sentence for murder. I share this point of view. I think that Pukach should be given the most severe punishment," Telychenko told reporters after a court session on Thursday.

"The indictment clearly states that Pukach performed the orders of [former Interior Minister Yuriy] Kravchenko and other senior officials," she added.

Telychenko said that at the court hearing it was absolutely clear that Pukach "shows no repentance, but, quite the contrary, tries to find a loophole through which his guilt would be less serious, and the murder would not be premeditated," she said.

The lawyer said that there was a very important issue, in which she does not agree with the state prosecutor: "This is a question of whether there was a contract killing. That is, this concerns the motives of the murder."

"In our case, the motive is what determines the charges against the defendant... The indictment clearly indicates, as a motive, that Pukach performed the criminal orders of Interior Minister Kravchenko and other senior officials, and this motive was clearly stated," she said.

Telychenko said she was bewildered that Pukach was not charged with a contract killing. She recalled that the pre-trial investigation found no connection between career development of Pukach and the fact that he committed this crime, but in the court proceedings, she said, the court had not questioned witnesses directly pointed by Pukach, from whom he received a criminal order. The lawyer also said that the issue concerns those who are currently alive, because ex-Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko is already dead.

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