Court orders former first deputy interior minister to publicly apologize to Oleksandra Gongadze - lawyer

Kyiv, October 3 (Interfax-Ukraine) - Kyiv Court of Appeals has obliged former First Deputy Interior Minister Mykola Dzhyha to publicly apologize to Oleksandra Gongadze for statements made earlier in relation to her son, Georgy Gongadze, in the media, lawyer Oleh Korol has said.

"The Court of Appeals decided to change the Pechersky District Court ruling and issue a new ruling - to oblige Mykola Vasyliovych Dzhyha to retract the information published in the articles 'Georgy Gongadze was a Georgian army soldier' in the Interior Ministry's In the Name of the Law weekly newspaper on October 6, 2000, '$5,000 in Debt For Gongadze' in the Kievskie Vedomosti newspaper, 'Chechen trace' not found and not considered' in the Weekly 2000 newspaper on October 6, 2000," the lawyer said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Wednesday.

He noted that a respective decision was made on September 26, 2013.

According to the lawyer, Kyiv Court of Appeals, in particular, added in the previous ruling of the Pechersky District Court the obligation to publish a retraction in the Weekly 2000 newspaper at the expense of Dzhyha

The article must appear in the weekly newspaper in a special section or on the same page and the same font as the retracted information not later than a month after the court decision comes into force.

Korol also said that in during the consideration of the case at the Court of Appeal a representative of the Weekly 2000 newspaper showed Dzhyha's original letter to the newspaper with a request to retract the information he distributed about Gongadze before.

"But he did it even before the Pechersky Court decision took legal force... He sent this letter in July 2013... Perhaps some remnants of Mr. Dzhyha's conscience were still awake," he added.

Journalist Gongadze, the founder of the Internet publication Ukrainska Pravda, disappeared in Kyiv on September 16, 2000. A beheaded body was found in a forest outside Kyiv in November 2000, and experts concluded preliminarily that it could have been Gongadze's. Remains of a skull were found in Kyiv region in 2009, and the Prosecutor General's Office concluded that they were Gongadze's. The body, however, has still not been buried, as the journalist's mother, Lesia Gongadze, is refusing to recognize the remains as her son's.

In November 2000, a transcript of several tapes pointing to the involvement of then Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma and other officials in a number of high-profile crimes, including the Gongadze murder, was published in the parliament. Those tapes were allegedly recorded by former Major of the State Guard Department Mykola Melnychenko.

On March 21, 2011, a criminal case was opened against Second Ukrainian President (1994-2005) Leonid Kuchma. He was accused of abuse of office and power that resulted in 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.

On January 29, 2013, Kyiv's Pechersky District Court found Pukach guilty of killing Gongadze and sentenced him to life in prison. The court also stripped Pukach of his lieutenant general rank and obliged him to pay UAH 500,000 to Gongadze's widow, Myroslava Gongadze, and UAH 100,000 to journalist Oleksiy Podolsky, who is another injured party in the case.

Judge Andriy Melnyk asked Pukach after pronouncing the sentence whether he understands it, and Pukach replied: "I will recognise the sentence when [former Ukrainian President Leonid] Kuchma and [former presidential chief of staff Volodymyr] Lytvyn are also put in jail together with me."