(RSF/IFEX) – On 12 February 2003, RSF called for new forensic tests in the death of journalist Mikhailo Kolomiets. The journalist’s body was found hanging from a tree in October 2002. The organisation said it was still not clear whether he was murdered. French pathologist Jean Rivolet took part in an autopsy in Ukraine from […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 12 February 2003, RSF called for new forensic tests in the death of journalist Mikhailo Kolomiets. The journalist’s body was found hanging from a tree in October 2002. The organisation said it was still not clear whether he was murdered.
French pathologist Jean Rivolet took part in an autopsy in Ukraine from 11 to 13 December that failed to rule out the police explanation of suicide, since no traces of violence were found on Kolomiets’ body.
“It would be premature to conclude that he killed himself just because the autopsy could not prove otherwise,” said RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard. “The criminal inquiry is not yet completed and we have asked the authorities to do more tests, especially on the clothes he was wearing when he died.”
Kolomiets headed the Ukrainski Novyny news agency. His body was found hanging from a tree in a forest near Molodechno, in neighbouring Belarus, on 30 October. He had gone missing on 21 October, and police said he had gone to Belarus the next day, intending to kill himself.
“We have asked Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Svyatoslav Piskun to investigate why he left Ukraine, which is still unclear, but have not yet received a reply,” noted Ménard.
In early February, an inquiry in Belarus led by the Ukrainian League of Economic Journalists and the Institute of Mass Information (IMI) found no proof of an attack on Kolomiets, but did not rule out the possibility that the journalist may have been subjected to psychological pressure to commit suicide.
Friends and colleagues have rejected the suicide theory and say Kolomiets’ death may have been connected to his work. They point to political and economic news published by his news agency that may have angered powerful people and interests.
Kolomiets, aged 44, founded the Ukrainski Novyny agency in 1997 and had a half share in it, with the other half held by the Agency for Humanitarian Technologies, headed by Valery Khoroshkovsky, one of President Leonid Kuchma’s close associates. On 16 December, the journalist’s widow, Ludmyla Kolomiets, said publicly that her husband had been threatened and harassed in the months preceding his death.
