KIEV, Ukraine, March 2 (UPI) -- Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko says the arrest of two senior policemen for the killing of a dissident journalist closes a case of government corruption.
"The killers of Georhiy Gongadze have been found and arrested," Yushchenko told reporters in Kiev, adding the "former regime acted as the umbrella, protecting the killers."
The Russian news service Interfax said Yushchenko pointed to former Prosecutor-General Gennadiy Vasilyev as a man "whose mission was not to solve this case."
The men arrested were colonels in the state police, and they are charged with the slaying of Gongadze after his disappearance Sept. 16, 2000. Two months later, his decomposed, headless body was found in a wooded area outside Kiev. Monday, his skull was found.
Details of what led to the two men's arrest were not disclosed.
Gongadze wrote relentlessly about corruption under the government of then-President Leonid Kuchma before he disappeared.
Finding his killers was one of the platforms in Yushchenko's election campaign.
