Ukrainian Police Official Sentenced for Murder of Crusading Journalist

The former president is suspected of complicity

A Ukrainian court has convicted a former police general of killing an investigative journalist and sentenced him to life in prison.

Heorhiy Gongadze, who exposed high-level corruption, was kidnapped in September 2000 and his decapitated body was found in a forest outside Kiev several months later.

Then-president Leonid Kuchma was accused of involvement in the murder based on audio recordings secretly made in his office in which he allegedly conspires against the journalist. Prosecutors opened a probe against Kuchma in 2011, but a court dropped the charges against him later that year.