Kiev police chief jailed for Gongadze murder A senior police officer found guilty of carrying out the gruesome murder of a journalist 13 years ago implicated a former Ukrainian president and his aide as he was sentenced on Tuesday. The parting words of General Oleksiy Pukach will mean doubts will linger over the case that has haunted Ukraine ever since September 2000, when Georgy Gongadze,an opposition journalist, disappeared. His headless corpse was discovered two months later in a forest 75 miles from Kiev. Listening from behind courtroom bars while Kiev's Pechersk district court read out its guilty verdict, Pukach, 60, grasped a prayer book and bowed as he was jailed for life. But when one of the three judges asked if he accepted their verdict, he replied: "I will accept it when Kuchma and Lytvyn join me in this cage" - a reference to Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine's president from 1994 to 2005, and Volodymyr Lytvyn, the former speaker in parliament, whom Pukach accuses of ordering the murder. His words will add weight to claims by lawyers and free speech activists that the authorities have pinned the crime on henchmen who physically carried it out, while protecting high-level officials who allegedly stood behind it. Mr Kuchma and Mr Lytvyn have repeatedly denied the allegations. Captured in June 2009 after years in hiding, Pukach has admitted to murdering Gongadze, claiming to have done so upon orders from the top. "Thank God that this phrase [by Pukach] was heard not only by me, but also by the journalists" who were allowed to attend the verdict in a largely closed trial, said Valentyna Telychenko, a lawyer representing Gongadze's widow. "There is obviously no political will to solve this case, to establish who ordered this murder," she said, adding her client might appeal on the grounds that the case failed to establish a motive for the crime and ignored Pukach's own testimony that he was following orders. As a journalist, Mr Gongadze investigated corruption by top officials. The court established that after being kidnapped by a gang of police officers led by Pukach, Gongadze was beaten, beheaded, his body burnt and buried. A court in 2008 sentenced three of Pukach's accomplices to 12-13 year prison terms. Mr Kuchma and his inner circle were linked to the crime early on. Secret audio recordings, allegedly of conversations in the president's office, were released shortly afterwards by Mykola Melnychenko, Mr Kuchma's bodyguard. Voices resembling Mr Kuchma and top aides were heard ordering subordinates to do away with the journalist. The scandal rocked Ukraine and left Mr Kuchma increasingly isolated for the last years of his presidency, which ended with the 2004 Orange Revolution that overturned the election of Viktor Yanukovich - formerly Mr Kuchma's prime minister and now the country's president. Now 74, Mr Kuchma continues steadfastly to deny involvement, suggesting the murder and the so-called Melnychenko recordings were a plot by foreign powers to undermine his administration and Ukraine. Even after the end of Mr Kuchma's rule, the Gongadze investigation continued to be dogged by cover-up allegations, remaining a symbol of the corruption and impunity of top officials and vested interests. In March 2011, prosecutors formally launched charges against Mr Kuchma, accusing him of exceeding authority in "actions" that led to Gongadze's death. But a court in December 2011 ordered prosecutors to drop the charges, ruling that the recordings that appeared to incriminate Mr Kuchma were not acceptable evidence. According to Tuesday's verdict, Pukach claimed to have accidentally choked Gongadze to death. He claimed he was ordered by superiors to shake down Gongadze in order to gather information about alleged spying activities. Pukach has testified that the deceased Yuriy Kravchenko, interior minister at the time of the murder, ordered him to follow and interrogate Gongadze. However, shortly after the Orange Revolution, with the resulting possibility of a thorough investigation, Kravchenko was found with two gunshots to his head. An investigation ruled that his death was suicide. "Although he didn't meet with Kuchma in person, Pukach was witness to a telephone call on the subject [of Gongadze] that Kravchenko had with Kuchma," Ms Telychenko said. The verdict is formulated in a way to avoid the issue of linking the murder to those who may have ordered it. Jaroslav Koshiw, an American of Ukrainian roots and author of a book on the Gongadze murder, told the Financial Times: "This ironic outcome of the 13-year-old Gongadze affair is that today's president, Viktor Yanukovich, has allowed Kuchma to escape justice while imprisoning his leading political opponents, the former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko and the former interior minister, Yury Lutsenko, for abuse of office." Ukraine's handling of the Gongadze case is being closely watched internationally in parallel with the ongoing investigations and trials of jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko. Mr Yanukovich, who rose up political ranks to prime minister under Mr Kuchma's rule, stands accused by the West of preserving a system of "selective justice" to grant impunity to loyalists while sidelining opponents through politically motivated trials. He denies such accusations. Before being sentenced in 2011 to seven years in prison on abuse of office charges, Ms Tymoshenko described newly-launched investigations into Mr Kuchma as "window-dressing" aimed at establishing an impression that authorities were not engaging in politically-motivated trials.