To: Bill who wrote (96846 ) 3/2/2005 10:03:38 AM From: MulhollandDrive Read Replies (1) | Respond to But establishing a democracy and creating an economy with free and open markets invites lawlessness, in addition to the fundamentalism that exists in the southern states. It slows the process. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko announced on Tuesday that authorities had arrested the killers of Georgy Gongadze, a journalist murdered four years ago for uncovering high-level corruption under the regime of former president Leonid Kuchma. On Wednesday, authorities said two senior police officers had been arrested in connection with the murder. Gongadze - the muckraking founder of Ukrainska Pravda, an internet news website - vanished on 16 September 2000. His headless body was found two months later in a forest outside the capital, Kiev. The reform-minded and pro-Western Yushchenko, who recently came to power on the back of the “Orange Revolution”, had vowed to bring Gongadze’s killers to justice, claiming that Kuchma and his allies had stonewalled all past investigations. “The fact that the murder was not resolved for four and a half years and is now closed after a few weeks testifies to the fact that the previous authorities not only didn't have the political will to solve it, not only had a deficit of desire to solve it, but also […] provided cover for the murderers,” Yushchenko said. The unidentified suspects are providing information to investigators about Gongadze’s final hours and his “terrifying death”, he said. “The main task now is to get to the most important thing: who organized and ordered the murder." In June 2004, The Independent British daily newspaper detailed a wide-ranging cover up at the Ukrainian Interior Ministry immediately after Gongadze’s disappearance, relying on information passed over by investigators who feared their work would be halted under political pressure. The opposition has long pointed fingers at Kuchma, especially after a series of secret recordings made by a former bodyguard in the president’s office surfaced in 2001. On one of the tapes, a voice resembling Kuchma’s complains about Gongadze’s writings and tells then-interior minister Yuriy Kravchenko to "drive him [Gongadze] out, throw [him] out, give him to the Chechens”. US and other experts have authenticated the controversial tapes, which also suggest Kuchma’s complicity in other crimes, including illegal arms sales. The former president, who is currently vacationing in the Czech Republic, has admitted in the past that the voice on the tapes was his, but claimed the tapes had been doctored to implicate him. This is not likely to be the only breakthrough in cases allegedly hushed up by the previous authorities. Yushchenko promised that a new National Bureau for Investigation would probe the deaths of many other politicians, businessmen, and journalists during the Kuchma era. Some were clearly murdered, while a number died in very mysterious car accidents. (By Jeremy Druker in Prague)isn.ethz.ch
