Kyiv's appeals court upholds verdict against Pukach convicted of journalist Gongadze's murder

It took the judges about three hours to read out the materials of the appeal against Pukach's verdict, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported. Pukach and his lawyers, as well as media were present in the courtroom.  The investigators established that the then interior minister had given a verbal order to Pukach to keep Gongadze under observation because of his critical articles against the country's leaders, and then eliminate him. Pukach said after the hearings on the appeal that he had just followed orders as a subordinate. At the same time, neither he nor his lawyers named the person who had ordered the hit. His lawyers also said they were going to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. It was reported that journalist Gongadze went missing in Kyiv on September 16, 2000. In November of the same year a headless corpse was found in the woods in Kyiv region. Experts concluded that it might belong to the journalist. In 2009, the remains of a skull were found in Kyiv region, which, according to the Prosecutor General's Office, belonged to Gongadze. However, the body has not been buried yet, as the journalist's mother Lesya Gongadze refused to acknowledge that the found remains belonged to her son. On November 30, 2013, she died. On January 29, 2013, Kyiv's Pechersky district court ruled that the former head of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's outdoor surveillance department Pukach be sentenced to life imprisonment after he had been convicted of the murder of Gongadze. Both sides of the case appealed against the verdict.