UKRAINE:
New York, March 17, 2008—An appeals court in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, convicted on Saturday three suspects in the 2000 abduction and murder of Internet journalist Georgy Gongadze. The court sentenced a former police officer, Nikolai Protasov, to 13 years in prison; his fellow officers, Valery Kostenko and Aleksandr Popovych, were given 12-year terms. A fourth suspect—head of the Interior Ministry’s criminal investigation department under former President Leonid Kuchma, Gen. Aleksei Pukach—is still being sought on an international arrest warrant. The masterminds of the crime are still at large, according to international press reports and CPJ sources.

