Kyiv's Pechersky District Court has sentenced the former chief of the external surveillance department of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, Oleksiy Pukach, to life in prison for killing journalist Georgy Gongadze.

"The court decided to sentence Pukach to life in prison," reads the text of the verdict announced by Pechersky District Court on Tuesday.

The court also said this ruling can be appealed.

As reported, the criminal case opened against Pukach has been heard in closed regime (some materials are classified as secret) since April 2011. Over two dozen witnesses were questioned in the case.

Prosecutors, speaking during the court proceedings, asked the court to sentence Pukach to life imprisonment. They also asked the court to deprive the defendant of his general's rank, given the fact that only such a verdict will be recognized by society.

Thus, prosecutors insisted that Pukach's guilt had been proved, all circumstances had been investigated and that he should be found guilty of Gongadze's murder.

"Since we proposed the maximum punishment, we believe that this is a daring crime that was committed against journalists. In the dock is a person of the higher echelon of the Interior Ministry, who allowed himself to commit a crime against two journalists – Oleksiy Podolsky and Georgy Gongadze. Over the period of Ukraine's independence, I have not known more daring crimes against freedom of speech, which are undermining the authority of the state," state prosecutor Volodymyr Shylov told reporters on December 27, 2012.

Meanwhile, the question of the motives behind Gongadzes' killing remains open. Shylov noted that the defendant said he committed a contract killing, but "he gives no other details."

The injured party in the case supported the state prosecution's proposal to select the maximum punishment for Pukach. However, the injured party drew attention of the public to some gaps in the pre-trial and judicial investigations, as well as reluctance of the law enforcers to discover and punish people that ordered the murder of Gongadze.

Journalist and public activist Oleksiy Podolsky also represented the injured party in the case. He was attacked and kidnapped in June 2000. The investigation discovered that Pukach was directly involved in this crime.

In November 2000, a scandal broke in Ukraine after the parliament announced there were audio recordings allegedly made by former State Guard Department Major Mykola Melnychenko in the office of then President Leonid Kuchma. Melnychenko was charged with divulging state secrets, exceeding his powers and using forged documents. A criminal case was opened against Melnychenko.

The Main Investigatory Department of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in late 2012 finished the pre-trial investigation into the criminal case against Melnychenko and sent the indictment to the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine. SBU also said that Melnychenko and his defense lawyer had read the materials of the pre-trial investigation. However, the PGO resumed the pre-trial proceedings in order to investigate into some new details of the case.

The PGO investigated the murder of Gongadze in various directions. In particular, proceedings were carried out involving three former police officers who were involved in the murder, Pukach as their leader. Another proceedings are still carried out to discover who ordered the murder of Gongadze.

In 2008 three former police officers – colonels Valeriy Kostenko and Mykola Protasov, and major Oleksandr Popovych – were found guilty of killing the journalist and sentenced to 12 (Kostenko and Popovych) and 13 (Protasov) years in prison.

Pukach who had long been on the wanted list, was detained in Zhytomyr region on July 21, 2009, and has been kept in custody since then.

In December 2010, the PGO announced that the investigation into the criminal case was over. The investigation confirmed that Pukach killed the journalist by order of then Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko.

On March 4, 2005 Kravchenko was found shot dead in his house in Kyiv region. The day before he had been summoned for questioning on the Gongadze case.

In 2005 the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine stated that Kravchenko committed suicide and closed the criminal case on his death.

On March 31, 2011, the PGO approved the indictment against Pukach in the criminal case on the murder of Gongadze.

On March 21, 2011, a criminal case was opened against Second President of Ukraine (1994-2005) Leonid Kuchma. He was accused if abuse of office and power that resulted into the murder of journalist Gongadze (Part 3 of Article 166 of the Criminal Code of 1960).

On December 13, 2011, Kyiv's Pechersky District Court declared illegal the opening of the criminal case against Kuchma and cancelled the PGO's relevant instruction. The court refused to attach Melnychenko's recordings as evidence to the case.

Kyiv Court of Appeals and High Specialized Court on Civil and Criminal Cases upheld the decision to close the criminal case against Kuchma.

Kuchma categorically denied allegations of his involvement in the murder of the journalist.

In December 2012, First Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine Renat Kuzmin told journalists that the investigation to discover people that ordered the murder of Gongadze was added to the single register of pre-trial investigations and was investigated under new procedures foreseen by the new Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine that took effect on November 21, 2012.

Gongadze went missing in Kyiv on September 16, 2000. A decapitated corpse, which experts claimed could be that of Gongadze, was found in a forest outside Kyiv in November 2000. In May 2010, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko stated that fragments of a skull found in July 2009 in Kyiv region belonged to Gongadze.

However, the body has yet to be buried, as the journalist's mother Lesia Gongadze refuses to recognize that it belongs to her son.