Georgiy R. Gongadze

Georgiy Ruslanovych Gongadze
ka, გიორგი რუსლანის ძე ღონღაძე, Giorgi Ruslanis dze Ghonghadze (21 May 1969 – 17 September 2000) was a Georgian- Ukrainian journalist and film director who was kidnapped and murdered in 2000 near Kyiv. He founded the online newspaper ''Ukrainska Pravda'' along with Olena Prytula in 2000.

The circumstances of his death became a national scandal and a focus for protests against then-President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma. During the Cassette Scandal, audiotapes were released on which Kuchma, Volodymyr Lytvyn and other top-level administration officials are heard discussing the need to silence Gongadze for his online news reports about high-level corruption. Former Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko died of two gunshot wounds to the head on 4 March 2005, just hours before he was to begin providing testimony as a witness in the case. Kravchenko was the superior of the four policemen who were charged with Gongadze's murder soon after Kravchenko's death.Key suspect in Gongadze murder arrested; Pukach allegedly strangled journalist, but who gave the order? (UPDATED)
Kyiv Post, (22 July 2009) The official ruling of suicide was doubted by media reports.

Three former officials of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's foreign surveillance department and criminal intelligence unit (Valeriy Kostenko, Mykola Protasov and Oleksandr Popovych) accused of his murder were arrested in March 2005 and a fourth one (Oleksiy Pukach, the former chief of the unit) in July 2009. A court in Ukraine sentenced Protasov to a sentence of 13 years and Kostenko and Popovych to 12-year terms March 2008 (the trial had begun January 2006) for the murder. Gongadze's family believe the trial had failed to bring the masterminds behind the killing to justice. No one has yet been charged with giving the order for Gongadze's murder.Key Ukraine murder trial begins
BBC News (9 January 2006)

Early life and career

Born in Tbilisi, at the time the capital of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union, Gongadze was the son of Ruslan Gongadze, a Georgian architect, and Olesya Korchak, a Ukrainian dentist and a native of Lviv. His parents met in Lviv, where they studied in university and eventually married. In 1967, the Gongadze family moved to Tbilisi. Georgiy was born as a twin, but his brother was kidnapped from the hospital soon after their birth. When Gongadze was six years old, his parents divorced. His father later remarried and had another son with his second wife. His mother did not remarry, and continued to live and work in Tbilisi until 1994.From a warrior to a journalist (Від бійця до журналіста)
Ukrainska Pravda. 16 September 2003

During his school years, Gongadze was an outstanding athlete, and was part of the Soviet reserve Olympic team for the 100 and 200 metres. In addition to his native Ukrainian, he learned to speak Russian, Georgian, and English. In 1986 he enrolled in the Foreign Languages Institute in Tbilisi with a specialization in English, but in 1987 he was drafted into the Soviet Border Troops, serving in Turkmenistan on the border with Iran. His mother said that she had to pay to avoid him being sent to Afghanistan to fight in the Soviet–Afghan War.

Dissolution of the Soviet Union

Around that time, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev started his reforms of perestroika and glasnost. The reforms sped up the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Trying to preserve the Soviet state, several armed and civil conflicts arose in the Soviet Union, among them the April 9 tragedy in which Soviet troops killed 21 unarmed civilians. This radicalized many Georgians, including Gongadze.

In May 1989, Gongadze was discharged from the Border Troops. He and his father both joined the national movement "For Free Georgia"; Georgiy became its spokesperson, while Ruslan became the leader. In 1989 and 1990, Georgiy travelled to the Baltic states and Ukraine in an attempt to drum up foreign support for Georgia's independence from the Soviet Union. As part of his tour, in September 1989 he attended the first congress of the People's Movement of Ukraine in Kyiv, where he represented For Free Georgia.

Gongadze also attended Chervona Ruta, the first non-communist music and youth festival, held in September 1989 in Chernivtsi. At the festival, he met Mariana Stetsko, whom he married in 1990, and settled in Lviv, where he found a job as a teacher of English and physical education. While working, Gongadze also studied at the Romano-Germanic Languages Faculty of the University of Lviv. On 24 August 1991, following the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada announced that all residents of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic were considered to be citizens of Ukraine.

Fighting in Georgia (1991-1992)

In 1991, the first President of Georgia Zviad Gamsakhurdia declared several of his former allies as "enemies of the people", among them Ruslan Gongadze. Ruslan was forced to hide in the basement of a building next to the parliament in Tbilisi. In December 1991, a civil war ensued when government forces opened fire upon anti-Gamsakhurdia protestors in Tbilisi, while a militia armed by the oppositional parties counter-attacked. At the end of 1991 during the ongoing war, Georgiy Gongadze returned to his mother in Tbilisi. He led a team of medical emergency services transferring wounded to a hospital until snipers opened fire on them. On 14 January 1992, Gamsakhurdia fled Tbilisi and the conflict ended. The opposition took power, and Eduard Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister and communist leader of Soviet Georgia, was elected president. On 15 January 1992, Gongadze returned to Lviv, only to discover that his wife had left him.

Life in Ukraine (1992-1993)

In 1992, Gongadze founded a Georgian Culture Association in Lviv, named after the Bagrationi dynasty, which served as an informational centre. During the registration of the organization in government offices, Gongadze met Myroslava Petryshyn, his future second wife. The two of them wrote an article titled "Tragedy of Leaders" ( uk, Трагедія лідерів) about the Georgian Civil War, which was published in the Lviv newspaper ''Post-Postup'' in 1992. Later in 1992, Gongadze returned to Tbilisi again to visit his mother, who continued to work in a hospital as a nurse. At the time, he planned to leave political activism and start a business. However, after speaking with several people, he changed his mind, while his mother encouraged him to write about the victims of the Georgian Civil War. Gongadze received a camera from his mother, and filmed a documentary about the Georgian Civil War, entitled ''The Pain of My Land'' ( uk, Біль моєї землі). In February 1993, the film was shown on the Ukrainian channel UT-3.

In 1992, Abkhazia and South Ossetia proclaimed their independence from Georgia, and Georgia accused Russia of instigating conflicts in those regions. Soon new conflicts started. Gongadze volunteered to fight in Abkhazia, but was refused admission to military service by government authorities for being the son of Ruslan Gongadze and his role in promoting Georgian causes in Ukraine.

Gongadze returned to Lviv to perform his "diplomatic mission" in active support of Georgia in inter-ethnic conflicts. However, he was only able to find a marginal group of supporters willing to fight in Georgia, from the far-right Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian People's Self-Defence. Gongadze repeatedly visited UNA-UNSO gatherings in an attempt to find Ukrainians willing to fight. The UNA-UNSO, with its self-stated goal of "exiling communists and criminals from Ukraine and overpowering Russian expansionism," coincided with those of Georgian nationalists fighting Russian-backed separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In July 1993, the UNA-UNSO battalion "Argo", led by Dmytro Korchynsky arrived to Tbilisi and was ready for fight in Abkhazia.

Return to Georgia (1993)

Gongadze, however, did not return to Georgia with the UNA-UNSO, but remained in Ukraine, where his father was undergoing cancer treatment in Kyiv. He did not survive treatment, and died on 5 August 1993, at the age of 49. Following his father's death, Gongadze returned to Tbilisi to bury him. Afterwards, he began filming a new documentary, this one about Ukrainian fighters in Abkhazia. He obtained funds for the documentary by selling his military-issued AK-47.

By the time filming began, Russian-backed Abkhazian separatists had taken much of the lands they sought to control, and had encircled the region's administrative centre, Sukhumi. In September 1993, in exchange for a ceasefire, the government of Georgia agreed to pull its troops and heavy armament from Sukhumi. However, Abkhazian forces soon broke the ceasefire and launched an assault on the city, which was protected only by an army of irregular detachments. President of Georgia Eduard Shevardnadze, who also was present during the siege, appealed to the President of Russia Boris Yeltsin to stop the attack, but Yeltsin chose to ignore it.

On 17 September 1993, Gongadze left Tbilisi for Sukhumi to film the events. Upon arrival, he was mobilised for service in the Defense Forces of Georgia, and the following morning was at the frontlines along the Gumista River, where Abkhazian troops were conducting an assault. Gongadze was fighting in a trench when an artillery shell exploded above him, and shrapnel hit him in 26 places, including his right hand. The only thing preventing Gongadze's death was his helmet, and two soldiers that had been next to him were killed in the explosion. The shrapnel remained in Gongadze's body until his murder, and was later used to identify him.

Gongadze was quickly taken to a field hospital, where he brought attention to himself by requesting that someone return to the field, so that his bag of video cassettes would not be lost. In the field hospital, Gongadze also met Konstantin Alania, a local resident fighting among Georgian troops. That night, Gongadze and several other seriously wounded fighters were sent to Tbilisi on a plane shortly before the city fell to Abkhazian troops. Alania was left behind to continue fighting, and later managed to escape with some other militants, withdrawing through mountain corridors. In 1995, Alania left Georgia for Lviv, and coincidentally met Gongadze again. The two remained close friends for the remainder of Gongadze's life.

In Tbilisi, Gongadze's treatment continued, and he was tended to by his mother, still working in the military hospital. However, the situation remained tense due to food insecurity throughout Georgia. His mother tried to send him away from Georgia, but did not have enough money, as the government had not had enough money to pay hospital staff since December 1991. Gongadze's mother managed to raise enough funds through friends and relatives and, after two weeks in Tbilisi, Gongadze returned to Lviv in October 1993, with his mother staying behind. In Ukraine, Gongadze finished production of his new documentary, and it was shown on Ukrainian television under the name ''Shadows of War''.

Life in Ukraine (1992-2000)

From 1996 to 1997, Gongadze worked for the Ukrainian television channel STB. He worked for the Kyiv-based radio station Kontynent, on which he had his own show called ''First Round with Georhiy Gongadze''. His strongly independent line soon attracted hostility from the increasingly authoritarian government of President Leonid Kuchma; during the October 1999 presidential election, his commentaries prompted a call from Kuchma's headquarters to say "that he had been blacklisted to be dealt with after the election". In 1999, he was a spokesman for Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine leader Nataliya Vitrenko. Visiting New York City in January 2000 with other Ukrainian journalists, he warned of "the strangulation of the freedom of speech and information in our state".

In April 2000, Gongadze co-founded a news website, ''Ukrainska Pravda'' (), as a means of sidestepping the government's increasing influence over the mainstream media. He observed that following the muzzling of a prominent pro-opposition newspaper after the election, "today there is practically no objective information available about Ukraine". The website specialized in political news and commentary, focusing particularly on President Kuchma, the country's wealthy "oligarchs" and the official media.

In June 2000, Gongadze wrote an open letter to Ukraine's chief prosecutor about harassment from the Security Service of Ukraine directed towards himself and his ''Ukrainska Pravda'' colleagues and apparently related to an investigation into a murder case in the southern port of Odessa. He complained that he had been forced into hiding because of harassment from the secret police, that he said he and his family were being followed, that his staff were being harassed, and that the SBU were spreading a rumour that he was wanted on a murder charge.

Murder and initial investigations

Gongadze disappeared on the night of 16 September 2000, after failing to return home. Foul play was suspected from the outset. The matter immediately attracted widespread public attention and media interest. Eighty journalists signed an open letter to Kuchma urging an investigation and complaining that "during the years of Ukrainian independence, not a single high-profile crime against journalists has been fully resolved". Kuchma responded by ordering an immediate inquiry. This inquiry however, was viewed with scepticism. Opposition politician Hryhoriy Omelchenko stated that the disappearance had coincided with Gongadze receiving documents on corruption within the president's own entourage. The Verkhovna Rada set up a parallel inquiry run by a special commission. Neither investigation produced any results.

Two months later, on 3 November 2000, a body was found in a forest in the Tarashcha Raion of Kyiv Oblast, some outside Kyiv, near the city of Tarashcha. The corpse had been decapitated and doused in acid, apparently to make identification more difficult; forensic investigations found that the acid bath and decapitation had occurred while the victim was still alive. The Russian-edited, Russian-language Ukrainian newspaper ''Segodnya'' ("Today") reported that Gongadze had been abducted by policemen and accidentally shot in the head while seated in a vehicle, necessitating his decapitation (to avoid the bullet being recovered and matched to a police weapon). His body had been doused in petrol which had failed to burn properly, and had then been dumped. A group of journalists first identified it as being that of Gongadze, a finding confirmed a few weeks later by his wife Myroslava. In a bizarre twist, the corpse was then confiscated by the militsiya and resurfaced in a morgue in Kyiv. The authorities did not officially acknowledge that the body was that of Gongadze until the following February and did not definitively confirm it until as late as March 2003. The body was eventually identified and was to be returned to Gongadze's family to be buried two years after his disappearance. However, the funeral never took place. As of 23 June 2006 Gongadze's mother refused to accept the remains offered as it was not the body of her son. While visiting Kyiv in July 2006, Gongadze's widow Myroslava emphasized that the funeral had now become a solemn family issue and the date of the funeral would soon be appointed.

On 28 November 2000, opposition politician Oleksandr Moroz publicised secret tape recordings which he claimed implicated Kuchma in Gongadze's murder. The recordings were said to be of discussions between Kuchma, presidential chief of staff Volodymyr Lytvyn, and Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko, and were claimed to have been provided by an unnamed SBU officer (later named as Major Mykola Mel'nychenko, Kuchma's bodyguard). The conversations included comments expressing annoyance at Gongadze's writings as well as discussions of ways to shut him up, such as deporting him and arranging from him to be kidnapped and taken to Chechnya. Killing him was, however, not mentioned and doubt was cast on the tapes' authenticity, as the quality of the recordings was poor. Moroz told the Verkhovna Rada that "the professionally organised disappearance, a slow-moving investigation, disregard for the most essential elements of investigation and incoherent comments by police officials suggest that the case was put together."

In September 2001, the American detective agency Kroll Inc., contracted by the pro-Kuchma political party Labour Ukraine

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