Ukraine’s General Prosecutor Office instituted criminal proceedings against former President Leonid Kuchma. “Kuchma is charged with making illegal orders resulting in murder of a journalist,” Deputy General Prosecutor Renat Kuzmin stated. In 2000, Georgi Gongadze, a journalist who sharply criticized the Ukrainian leaders in power at that time, including President Leonid Kuchma, was abducted, murdered, and decapitated. Later in 2000, Kuchma’s former bodyguard Mykola Melnychenko published the audio records he secretly had made in Kuchma’s office. The records appeared to establish that Kuchma ordered the kidnap of Gongadze. The active investigation started in 2005 in the wake of the so-called “Orange Revolution.” In 2008, three police officers were convicted of Gongadze's murder. In 2010 charges were also brought against police general Alexey Pukach whose trial is pending. According to investigators, Pukach organized Gongadze's murder following orders of then Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko (who himself was found dead in 2005). Now the prosecutors have finally recognized “Melnychenko tapes” to be material evidence and have brought charges against Kuchma.
http://www.lenta.ru/news/2011/03/22/indeed/
http://www.vesti.ru/videos?vid=326526 (video)
UPDATE: Alan Dershowitz to represent Kuchma
http://www.lenta.ru/news/2011/03/28/lawyer/
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