KIEV, Dec. 14 - A Ukrainian court on Wednesday dismissed criminal proceedings against former president Leonid Kuchma into accusations he ordered the brutal murder of a prominent investigative journalist 11 years ago.

The Pechersky district court in Kiev annulled the criminal probe after an appeal by the legal team of Kuchma, who was president from 1994-2005, the Interfax news agency said.

Prosecutors earlier this year charged Kuchma with involvement in the murder of Georgy Gongadze in 2000 -- Ukraine's most notorious post-Soviet crime -- after years of pressure from the journalist's supporters.

However, the legal process appeared to stall in the next months, although the former president was formally questioned as a suspect and the suspected killer named Kuchma in court as the mastermind of the murder.

Valentina Telychenko, the lawyer for Gongadze's widow Myroslava, confirmed that the charges lodged by prosecutors had been dropped. She said the family would now go to the appeals court or the Ukrainian high court.

"I believe that this decision is illegal because the court was prejudiced from the first minute and allowed a huge number of procedural violations," she told AFP.

Kuchma said in a statement released by his lawyers that the decision was "necessary but insufficient" as the Ukrainian state needed to be wiped clear of all suspicion over the murder.
"My aim is not just the rehabilitation of myself but of Ukraine, which I led for 10 years," he said, quoted by the Interfax news agency.

Earlier this year, the trial opened of former interior ministry official Oleksiy Pukach who was arrested in July 2009 and confessed to personally strangling Gongadze in a forest outside Kiev.

In a court hearing on August 30, he accused Kuchma and three other officials including current parliament speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn of ordering the killing.

Kuchma and Lytvyn have always denied the charges.
But Gongadze's supporters point to tapes recorded by a former bodyguard of Kuchma -- Mykola Melnychenko -- where voices alleged to be of the former president and Lytvyn are heard speaking about eliminating Gongadze.

The tapes, whose publication in 2000 prompted mass protests in Ukraine, contain a voice resembling that of Kuchma suggesting to have Gongadze "kidnapped by Chechens".

They were initially accepted as evidence in the case but Wednesday's ruling by judge Halyna Suprun said that they were inadmissible as the recordings had been obtained by illegal means.

"The only basis for opening the criminal case was the audio tapes," she said. "But the accusation cannot be based on evidence that was obtained through illegal means."

Her decision was in line with a ruling by the Ukrainian constitutional court in October that accusations could not be based on evidence obtained through means deemed to be illegal.
But Telychenko condemned the court for "allowing itself to make its own evaluation of the evidence".

Kuchma, in his statement, said that not only did the masterminds of the Gongadze murder need to be found but also the organisers of the audio tape scandal.

"Only when the leaders of this plot against the foundations of the state are found can Ukraine show the whole world that it can protect its interests," he said.

Gongadze was the founder of the Ukrainska Pravda news site that was bitterly critical of Kuchma and the investigation into his murder is seen by the West as a test of Ukraine's commitment to media freedom.

Mystery still surrounds the death in March 2005 of Yuriy Kravchenko, the interior minister at the time of the murder, who was found dead with two gunshots wounds in his head just as he was about to be interrogated.

According to the official version, Kravchenko committed suicide. But opposition Ukrainian media have long speculated over possible foul play. (afp/ez)