"It was murder," lawyer Andrei Fedur said to Novosti/Ukraine news agency. He is legal adviser to Lesia Gongadze, mother of sensationally killed muckraking journalist Georgi Gongadze.
"It would be passed for suicide even if he had died of three or four not two shots-at least, that's my impression," remarked Mr. Fedur.
"A second shot followed the first in no time. I'd like to look in the eyes of the forensic experts who detected, with such ease and precision, the order in which the injuries followed each other. Surprisingly, no one doubts Kravchenko first shot in his chin and then blew his brains out with a shot in the temple-the suicide conjecture wouldn't work if it were the other way round."
There is another proof of the murder assumption, added our interviewee.
"Kravchenko had a proper funeral service in church-something suicides are banned. I don't think the clergy did not care. After all, it is one of the most drastic church rules. I know this is no legal argument, but it matters, all the same."
Kravchenko's death played into the hand of people who are out to "make the ex-minister entirely responsible for the Gongadze murder", the lawyer went on. "We cannot say the Gongadze case has been sealed. A crime can't be considered detected just because the top prosecutor says it is.
"We can't say the detection is over before Georgi Gongadze's head is recovered, the file passes to the law court concerning not only the killers but the masterminds and the people who ordered the murder, and before a verdict is passed to convict the culprits, and enters into legal force," the lawyer said hotly.
Georgi Gongadze was editor-in-chief of the Ukrainskaya Pravda, prominent opposition on-line periodical. He was reported missing in Kiev, September 16, 2000. Criminal proceedings were launched on his alleged murder. A beheaded body was found in the woodlands, in Kiev's environs, early November the same year. Forensic experts identified the missing journalist.
The Gongadze case was as good as detected, Ukraine's Prosecutor General Svyatoslav Piskun said, March 2, after two murder suspects were detained and confessed the crime.
