The big news in Ukraine today was the dismissal of charges against former President Leonid Kuchma that linked him to the 2000 murder of online investigative journalist Georgiy Gongadze.
From The Wall Street Journal:
State prosecutors charged the former president in March of abuse of office for giving orders that led to the gruesome slaying. Prosecutors said they had authenticated secret recordings, allegedly made in Mr. Kuchma’s office by one of his bodyguards, Mykola Melnychenko, that appeared to capture the then-president speaking with other top officials about Mr. Gongadze.
In one widely circulated audio file, a voice that Mr. Melnychenko and others familiar with the tapes allege is Mr. Kuchma’s pesters then-police chief Yuri Kravchenko to get rid of Mr. Gongadze. The voice on the file says: “Throw him out, drive him out, give him to the Chechens.”
But a Kiev judge, Halyna Suprun, ruled Wednesday that the opening of the case was illegal, dismissing the tapes as evidence as they were obtained “through unlawful means,” the Interfax news agency reported. Prosecutors said they would appeal the ruling.
The decision outraged critics, including Valentyna Telychenko, the lawyer of Gongadze’s widow, who said the tapes should be allowed as evidence.
“It’s the latest refusal to investigate the Gongadze case, which damages the prospects of establishing the person who ordered the murder,” she said.
Gongadze’s headless body was found in a forest outside Kiev in November 2000, two months after he disappeared. Three police officers have been convicted in the killing, but it’s still unknown exactly who ordered the murder.