WASHINGTON - The widow of a Ukrainian journalist killed in 2000 expressed doubt Wednesday that a key witness in the case, former interior minister Yury Kravchenko, really committed suicide.
Miroslava Gongadze, 33, whose husband Georgy's headless body was found two months after his disappearance in 2000, told AFP she was "exhausted emotionally" from recent developments in the case.
Kravchenko was found dead with two bullets in the head Friday on the day he was due to testify in connection with the grisly 2000 murder. The late minister left a suicide note saying that he never ordered the murder of Gongadze and that he was a victim of political intrigues.
"(Kravchenko) is the guy who could give a lot of information and I don't think that organizers of this crime would have liked him to speak," said Miroslava Gongadze, who moved to Washington nearly four years ago.
"I was very shocked when I heard the news, I never could have predicted that something like this could happen, that he would be able or that he would commit suicide," said Gongadze, a television presenter for the US-funded Voice of America broadcasting network.
"He was a strong person. My prediction was that he would fight for himself, try to give more information about who ordered the crime," Gongadze added.
"He was the key player in this crime, he was the person in the middle of the line, the person who received the order and who gave the order. He was the middleman."
Like some Ukrainian media, she questioned how Kravchenko could have fired two bullets in his head on his own.
"It's really bad that he did what he did, or maybe somebody helped him to commit this suicide," she said.
"I really don't have enough information to say, it has to be investigated. The two bullets in his head, I can't imagine how a person can shoot himself in the head twice."
"It's really in the realm of possibilities that somebody might have helped him. He's the guy who could give a lot of information and I don't think that organizers of this crime would have liked him to speak," the journalist said.
But Ukrainian assistant prosecutor Victor Shokin defended the suicide theory.
"First, he shot himself in the chin, the bullet came out near his nose. Then he shot himself in the right temple," the prosecutor said, according to online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda.
Miroslava Gongadze said three top Ukrainian officials may have had an interest in keeping Kravchenko quiet: former president Leonid Kuchma and his chief of staff Volodymyr Litvin, and former security service chief Leonid Derkach.
"It's possible that these three people wouldn't like him to speak. Maybe it's somebody else, but it's hard to say," she said.
Ukraine prosecutors said Wednesday for the first time that they planned to question Kuchma, who has denied involvement in the killing.
A mother of seven-year-old twins, Miroslava Gongadze was trained in law and once served as a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian opposition.
She said she was encouraged by pro-Western opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko's win in a repeat presidential election in December, which came after a peaceful "orange revolution" triggered by fraud in the previous poll.
"These last four years, I didn't feel a will from Ukrainian authorities to investigate this case," she said.
"After Yushchenko became president, I felt he was willing to investigate. The question is how far are they ready to go," she added.
"But a lot of old people are still in government who don't want all this information to become public. I still have to push the case," Gongadze said.
Last week, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Svyatoslav Piskun said two alleged assassins had been arrested.
"Any step forward is good," the investigative journalist's widow said, adding, "I would like to see not only the perpetrators but also the instigators in front of justice."
03/09/2005 19:52 GMT