KIEV, July 22 – Olekskiy Pukach, a former top police officer who is alleged to have killed journalist Heorhiy Gongadze almost nine years ago, was captured Tuesday, ending a six-year manhunt, the security service reported Wednesday.

Pukach, a former head of surveillance department at the Internal Affairs Ministry, was named as the killer of Gongadze by three his subordinate police officers who had been jailed in March 2008.

Pukach is seen by investigators as the only person who can lead investigation to those who had actually ordered the murder, which had shaken Ukraine’s political landscape since September 2000.

Former President Leonid Kuchma and his former chief aide, Volodymyr Lytvyn, who is now the speaker of Parliament, were alleged by Mykola Melnychenko, Kuchma’s former bodyguard, of conspiring against Gongadze. Kuchma and Lytvyn have repeatedly denied the allegations.

“I think the society will hear big news,” President Viktor Yushchenko said Wednesday.

Yushchenko, who replaced Kuchma as the president of Ukraine in January 2005, had pledged to make the Gongadze’s murder investigation a top priority of his five-year term in office as president.

“The investigation of the Gongadze murder is a matter of honor for me,” Yushchenko said. “This is the battle between good and evil.”

Pukach, the star witness in the Gongadze case, is currently kept at an undisclosed location in Kiev and is under 24-hour protection by Alfa, security service’s counter-terrorism force.

Pukach is the only top police officer linked to the Gongadze investigation who is still alive. His three former bosses, Yriy Kravchenko, Eduard Fere and Yuriy Dagayev, are all dead.

Kravchenko, a close Kuchma ally, was found dead in his garage in March 2005 on the same day when he was supposed to be questioned in the Prosecutor General Office over the Gongadze murder.

“Yesterday, I ordered [the security service] to make sure that a single hair doesn’t drop from the head of Pukach,” Yushchenko said. “He must be kept in the area where his life is under security protection every second.”

Vasyl Hrytsak, a deputy head of SBU, said that Pukach after his arrest had already mentioned names of people that had apparently ordered the murder of Gongadze. “He said the murder was not an accident,” Hrytsak said at a press conference, refusing to elaborate.

Pukach apparently also promised to show the place where Gongadze’s head had been kept hidden, following the journalist’s decapitation in September 2000. The head, which is still missing, would be the key evidence in the murder.

Pukach apparently lived a quite life in the Molochayky village in the Zhytomyr region, mostly fishing in a nearby pond and operating his own small farming machinery.

He lived in a house on the outskirts of the village, with his civil wife, and a step son. He was known to the people by the first name of Petro, a retired sea captain.

Serhiy Osyka, Pukach’s lawyer, said his client was ready to provide crucial “information” in the Gongadze murder.

“I think that Pukach will be able to give law enforcement agencies the information that will have considerable value for the society,” Osyka said Wednesday according to Unian report.

But Osyka said a new investigation must be conducted - now including Pukach’s evidence - because the March 2008 court ruling was not fair to his client.

In March 2008 the court convicted three former police officers, Mykola Protasov, Valeriy Kostenko and Oleksandr Popovych, for years in prison for their involvement in the Gongadze murder. All three named him as the killer.

Protasov was sentenced to 13 years in jail. Kostenko and Popovych each received 12-year sentences.

In September 2000, Gongadze, who frequently criticized Kuchma, got into what he thought was a cab, and was then joined by three others and driven outside Kiev, according to the defendants. He was beaten and strangled, his body doused with gasoline and burned. Experts said he was dead before he was decapitated.

Gongadze’s killing set off months of protests in 2000 and 2001 after Melnychenko released tapes on which a voice resembling Kuchma’s is heard conspiring with others against the journalist.

“Today Ukraine observes the completion of the most principle criminal case,” Yushchenko said. “The principle thing is not only the fact that the law will prevail, but that it will prevail over actions that had been committed by the most senior officials.” (tl/ez)