UKRAINE: EX-MINISTER DRIVEN TO SUICIDE, ASSUMES PARLIAMENT SPEAKER
RIA Novosti
KIEV, March 15 (RIA Novosti) - Yuri Kravchenko, Ukraine's previous Interior Minister, was driven to suicide, holds Speaker Vladimir Litvin of the Supreme Rada, parliament.
"I regard the matter as a man-in-the-street, and I suspect Yuri Kravchenko was deliberately driven to suicide. To have him dead meant to remove all who could be held responsible for the conjectures that law enforcement people are obstinately thrusting on the public. It is up to the law court alone to determine whether one is guilty or innocent. Meanwhile, what's going on in this country ever closer resembles lynching," the Speaker said in an interview with the newspaper, Stolichnye Novosti, reports Novosti/Ukraine news agency.
Yuri Kravchenko was found dead in his country house near Kiev, with two bullets through his head, in the morning March 4, the day for which he had been summoned to the Prosecutor General's office to be questioned on the Gongadze murder.
Georgi Gongadze, editor-in-chief of Ukrainskaya Pravda, prominent opposition on-line periodical, was reported missing in Kiev, September 16, 2000. Murder proceedings were launched. Detection has not finished to this day. A beheaded body was found in the Taraschani District woodlands, not far from Kiev, early November the same year. Forensic experts identified the muckraking journalist.
A sensation shook the Rada, November 28, 2000, as Alexander Moroz, Socialist Party group leader, offered to parliament audio recordings which Nikolai Melnichenko, President Leonid Kuchma's bodyguard, had allegedly made in his boss's office. Burning issues were under debate in the footages, in particular, Georgi Gongadze's work. The voices closely resembled those of President Kuchma; Vladimir Litvin, then his chief of staff; Leonid Derkach, Security Service chief; and Yuri Kravchenko.
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