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Georgiy Gongadze

Georgiy Ruslanovich Gongadze (Ukrainian: Георгій Русланович Ґонґадзе, Heorhiy Ruslanovych Gongadze; Georgian: გიორგი ღონღაძე; 21 May 1969 – 17 September 2000) was a Georgian-born Ukrainian journalist and film director who was kidnapped and murdered in 2000.The circumstances of his death became a national scandal and a focus for protests against the government of the then President, Leonid Kuchma. During the Cassette Scandal, audiotapes were released on which Kuchma, Volodymyr Lytvyn and other top-level administration officials are allegedly heard discussing the need to silence Gongadze for his online news reports about high-level corruption. Former Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko died of two gunshots to the head on 4 March 2005, just hours before he was to begin providing testimony as a witness in the case. Kravchenko was the superior of the four policemen who were charged with Gongadze's murder soon after Kravchenko's death. The official ruling of suicide was doubted by media reports.Three former officials of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's foreign surveillance department and criminal intelligence unit (Valeriy Kostenko, Mykola Protasov and Oleksandr Popovych) accused of his murder were arrested in March 2005 and a fourth one (Oleksiy Pukach, the former chief of the unit) in July 2009. A court in Ukraine sentenced Protasov to a sentence of 13 years and Kostenko and Popovych to 12-year terms March 2008 (the trial had begun January 2006) for the murder. Gongadze's family believe the trial had failed to bring the masterminds behind the killing to justice. No one has yet been charged with giving the order for Gongadze's murder.Gongadze's widow Myroslava Gongadze and their two children received political asylum in the United States and have lived there since 2001.Gongadze was awarded the title Hero of Ukraine by President Viktor Yushchenko on 23 August 2005.