Mykola Melnychenko, a former security officer who claims to have secretly recorded conversations that implicate Ukrainian ex-president Leonid Kuchma in the murder of an opposition journalist, has been detained in the airport of Naples, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.
“Melnychenko was detained on August 3 in the airport of Naples on an Interpol warrant. He has been provided with a lawyer,” spokesman Alexander Dikusarov said.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office in 2011 put Melnychenko on the nation's wanted list. Shortly after journalist Georgy Gongadze’s decapitated body was found in a forest near Kiev in November 2000, Melnychenko released a tape which he had allegedly recorded in the ex-president's office.
Ukrainian prosecutors opened a criminal case against Kuchma on suspicion of his involvement in the journalist's murder. Kuchma has denied any involvement and said he is ready to stand trial to prove he is innocent of the journalist's murder.
In June 2008, three former employees of the Interior Ministry's criminal investigations department were found guilty of murdering Gongadze. The officers said they killed the journalist on orders from the former head of the ministry's criminal investigations department, Lt. Gen. Oleksiy Pukach.
Pukach was arrested in the summer of 2009. In September, prosecutors said Yuriy Kravchenko, interior minister in 2000, was also responsible for ordering the murder. Kravchenko purportedly committed suicide in 2005.
