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Additional blood test required in Yushchenko’s poisoning case - prosecutor gen.

07 November 2010 04:53 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Ukraine’s recently appointed prosecutor general said another blood test is needed to investigate the 2004 dioxin poisoning of ex-president Viktor Yushchenko in 2004, APA reports quoting RIA Novosti.
A number of conflicting theories arose as to who might have poisoned him - or indeed if he was poisoned at all.
Incumbent president Viktor Yanukovych’s nominee, Viktor Pshonka, whose candidacy was approved by the parliament on Thursday, said investigators have doubts about the impartiality of tests, conducted by experts in the United States, Austria and Britain.
"As far as ex-president Yushchenko’s poisoning is concerned, investigators have serous doubts about the objectivity of the examination, of the tests which were carried out abroad. Blood samples should again be taken for analysis from Viktor Andreevich [Yushchenko] to answer a number of questions," Pshonka said in an interview with Ukraine’s Inter TV channel.
He said Yushchenko was invited three times to undergo another blood test, but ignored the invitation.
Pshonka’s predecessor, Oleksandr Medvedko, was criticized for failing to investigate Yushchenko’s poisoning and another high-profile case, the beheading of prominent Ukrainian journalist Georgy Gongadze in September 2000.
Pshonka said that the case of former high-ranking interior ministry official, who is accused of ordering the killing, would be sent to court in January.
Three interior ministry officers, who admitted carrying out the killing, are already serving their prison sentences. They said they acted on orders from the former head of the ministry’s criminal investigations department, Lt. Gen. Oleksa Pukach.
Pukach evaded arrest and fled to Israel. He was put on Ukraine’s most-wanted list and subsequently arrested in summer 2009 in Kiev.