Ukrainian prosecutors set to bring ex-president to trial

Ukrainian Prosecutor General's office has no plans to close the criminal case against ex-president Leonid Kuchma despite a Constitutional Court ruling that the evidence was obtained illegally. Ukraine's First Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin said in an interview aired by Ukraine's Inter TV channel that "the case will definitely not be ended at the investigation stage." In March Ukraine's state prosecutor opened a criminal case against Kuchma for his suspected role in the murder of opposition journalist Georgiy Gongadze, whose headless body was found in a forest outside Kiev in September 2000. Kuchma, who ruled Ukraine from 1994 to 2005, categorically denies involvement. In July the Ukrainian security service (SBU) asked the Constitutional Court to withdraw testimony from Mykola Melnychenko, a former security officer who claims to have secretly recorded conversations allegedly featuring Kuchma giving the order "to take care of" the journalist, since the evidence was gathered illegally. The Court ruled that only factual information that was received in compliance with Criminal Procedures law can be considered legitimate and used as evidence in a criminal case. "The recordings have been registered in the case file as evidence. It's up to the court to have the final say on whether such evidence is legitimate or not," the first deputy prosecutor general said. In June 2008, three former employees of the Interior Ministry's criminal investigations department were found guilty of murdering Gongadze. The officers said they killed the journalist on orders from the former head of the ministry's criminal investigations department, Lt. Gen. Oleksa Pukach. Pukach evaded arrest and fled to Israel. He was arrested in summer 2009 in Kiev and is awaiting trial. In September the state prosecutor accused Yuri Kravchenko, who was interior minister in 2000, of ordering the murder