Kuchma to be questioned over reporter’s death

FORMER Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma is expected to be questioned this week over the grisly murder of an opposition reporter, after his former interior minister implicated in the killing was found dead in what police have called a suicide.

The former president cut short a vacation in the Czech Republic to return to Kiev on Saturday, a day after his one-time interior minister Yury Kravchenko was found dead just hours before he was due to answer prosecutors’ questions over the 2000 killing of investigative reporter Heorhiy Gongadze.

The journalist’s gruesome death became a symbol of the rampant corruption within Mr Kuchma’s regime.

It sparked widespread opposition that eventually led to its downfall late last year and is now threatening some of its most senior members.

Although prosecutors have not yet said whether they will summon Mr Kuchma, many observers expect the former leader - who was implicated in the killing in recordings that his former bodyguard smuggled out of the country - to eventually be questioned.

“It’s very likely that Kuchma will be questioned,” said Andriy Yermolayev, a political analyst.

Mr Gongadze, who had been critical of Mr Kuchma in articles in his Internet newspaper, Ukrainska Pravda, disappeared in September 2000 and his headless body was found two months later.

The murder triggered widespread anger at the government that culminated in last year’s “orange revolution” protests that brought to power opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko - a Kuchma opponent who nearly died from poisoning during the election campaign.

Mr Yushchenko has made solving the murder one of the top priorities of his administration.

Mr Kuchma was implicated in the death after his former bodyguard Mykola Melnichenko released tapes that had allegedly recorded Mr Kuchma, in between epithets, ordering Mr Kravchenko to take care of the persistent investigative reporter.

Mr Kuchma has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and has called the tapes a fabrication. On Friday he said he was innocent “before God, before the people and before my conscience”.

Speculation swirled in Ukraine over whether Mr Kravchenko, who was found dead with two shots to his head at his elite country home on the morning he was due to appear at the prosecutor’s office to answer questions in the Gongadze case, killed himself as police insist.