Former Ukrainian police general Alexey Pukach, in hiding for the last six years, was found and arrested on accusations of kidnapping and murdering journalist Georgy Gongadze in 2000. Three other police officers were sentenced for the murder to various terms of imprisonment in 2008; Pukach escaped and has been wanted since then. According to the investigators, Pukach personally strangled Gongadze; then the murderers decapitated the body and left it in a forest. Gongadze was a pro-opposition journalist focusing his criticism, in particular, on then Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma. Later in 2000 Kuchma's bodyguard Major Mykola Melnichenko published secret tape records allegedly showing that Kuchma expressed annoyance with Gongaze's writings and discussed with the Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko ways to shut Gongadze up (including kidnapping but not including killing). Only in 2005, after the "Orange Revolution," new President Vladimir Yushchenko re-launched an investigation resulting in sentencing three immediate murderers in 2008. However, it is still unproved who exactly ordered the murder. Ex-Minister Kravchenko committed suicide in 2005 before being interrogated (reportedly, with two shots to the head).
http://lenta.ru/news/2009/07/22/gongadze/ (Russ.)
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