Chornovil killed with brass knuckles – ex-Dpty Prosecutor General Holomsha

KYIV. Sept 15 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Leader of the People’s Movement of Ukraine Vyacheslav Chornovil was killed not in a road accident, but as a result of the murder with knuckle dusters, former Deputy Prosecutor General Mykola Holomsha has said.

"We investigated the case of the murder of Chornovil back then [during the presidency of Leonid Kuchma] and found that Chornovil was killed with four blows of brass knuckles in the back of the head and with the same brass knuckles finished off the driver," Holomsha said on Channel 4.

Answering a clarifying question "was it definitely not a traffic accident?" Holomsha said: "It is indisputable that it was not an accident […] I have such a formed opinion and conviction. And the same opinion is with the investigator and the head of the operational service."

"It was found that the airbags were disabled, [a document of] the inspection of the scene was falsified, the place of the murder of the main witness in Volyn was established. When we dug up the corpse, there were heavy metals in the bones. And we ‘unrolled’ an expert who said that did not open the corpse of Chornovil," he said.

According to Holomsha, "during the most active phase of the investigation of this and other high-profile criminal cases, the cases were taken from him under ‘fake pretexts’ and transferred to another deputy prosecutor general."

He said "the seizure of cases took place under the Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko."

Chornovil died tragically on March 25, 1999 in a car accident near Kyiv, when his car collided with a KamAZ truck with a trailer that was turning on the highway. The driver of the politician Yevhen Pavlov was also killed, the press secretary was wounded. Chornovil’s associates, a number of politicians have repeatedly announced a political murder.

In June 2010, Kyiv prosecutor’s office exhumed Chornovil’s body for a second commission of forensic medical examination. The examination was conducted at the request of the relatives of the deceased and was necessary to remove contradictions in the evidence base during the investigation of a criminal case, that is, to establish the nature of the bodily harm and to establish the causes of death of the leader of the People’s Movement of Ukraine.

In August 2011, an examination of Chornovil’s body established that he died as a result of injuries sustained in an accident.

On January 21, 2014, Boryspil District Court closed the case on the death of Chornovil. However, in April 2014, the investigation was reopened. The panel of judges of Kyiv Region Court of Appeal sent the case on the death of leader of the People’s Movement of Ukraine Chornovil for additional investigation to the prosecutor’s office, thus sustaining the victims’ petition in the case. In particular, the court overturned the ruling of Boryspil District Court to close the case.