MARY MYCIO - The other Khashoggi: A gruesome death in Ukraine provides a warning for those following the murder of the Saudi journalist

An opposition journalist disappears. Anonymous tapes hint at his gruesome murder. An autocrat selling himself as a pro-Western reformer, beset by intrigue at home, is blamed for the death. In moral repugnance, the democratic world shuns him, sparking a foreign policy crisis. If this sounds like the case of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, that’s because it is. But the scenario also describes the sensational disappearance in 2000 of journalist Georgi Gongadze in Ukraine.

Back then, the autocrat was President Leonid Kuchma, who had appointed pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko as prime minister. Gongadze’s headless body provided proof of his death. And secret tapes, reportedly made by a bodyguard, pointed at the president. That, at least, is the conventional wisdom. The real Gongadze story is a cautionary tale about believing authoritarian governments in sensational crimes where their leaders have much to gain or lose.

That may seem obvious. Indeed, most observers are justifiably skeptical about Riyadh’s protests of innocence. Yet, in the age of fake news and foreign disinformation, too many have rushed to believe the juicy but anonymous government leaks from Turkish media — the sole sources of nearly all the gory allegations in the case. The CIA’s own apparent wiretaps are far more mundane and ambiguous. Of the few exceptions, such as the recently reported transcripts prepared by Turkish authorities of the most shocking alleged recordings, none have been independently authenticated.

Georgi Gongadze, known as Gia, stood out as a voice of opposition on his radio show in Kiev. Like the thrice-married Khashoggi, about to embark on his fourth nuptials with a Turkish Ph.D. student he met last May, Gongadze had a complicated personal life. He was married, a father of twins with his second wife Myroslava, and he was having an affair with Olena Prytula, a reporter in Kuchma’s exclusive press pool. In April, he and Prytula started a political webzine called Ukraiinska Pravda, or “Ukrainian Truth.” It had a shadowy sponsor, but the money was modest and so was UP, as the publication came to be called. Few knew of it. Accidentally, I was one of them. Less accidentally, so were some of Kuchma’s allies.

These allies used leaks to pursue their goals and smear opponents, and the UP's republication of dirt from Russian media did both while also fanning the president’s dislike of Gongadze. When UP posted a Russian article with dirt about a crony’s son, for example, the upset father told Kuchma — falsely — that Gongadze wrote it. By September, UP’s secret sponsor had dropped the publication, and staff were quitting. The day of Gongadze’s disappearance, which he spent with his mistress, the journalist was mostly worried about money.

Prytula was the last to see him alive. She was also the one to raise the alarm, and held a press conference, joined by his wife, two days later. But many questioned the rush to cry foul play.
Public interest waned. Without a body, doubts lingered. Men caught between wives and lovers can skip town, or worse. His wife, Myroslava, had a solid alibi. And Prytula evidendtly had powerful protection. The police never interrogated her.

Then, in early November, seven weeks after Gongadze disappeared, a grisly, headless corpse was discovered in a forest near a town called Tarashcha. The body reportedly was found with Gongadze’s necklace, though that detail was never confirmed. Kiev’s top forensics expert said the corpse was too old to belong to the missing journalist. Instead of having it buried, the town coroner kept the unidentified corpse in the morgue... read more:
https://www.politico.eu/article/georgi-gongadze-murder-ukraine-journalist-leonid-kuchma-the-other-jamal-khashoggi/


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