journalist has info on government sleuths

an investigative journalist claims to have learned identities of agents who tracked gongadze weeks before he disappeared last september.

the journalist, oleh yeltsov, reported the names of the agents, along with evidence to back his claims, to the ad hoc parliamentary committee that is looking into gongadze's disappearance.

yeltsov learned the identities of the men from sources he declined to name. he claims the men following gongadze were interior ministry agents.

yeltsov said "the order to monitor (gongadze's) activities was given by interior minister kravchenko, who received regular briefings."

yeltsov says two teams from the interior ministry's criminal investigations bureau were assigned to follow gongadze. the first squad of sleuths was disbanded shortly after gongadze notified the office of the prosecutor general in july.

"three agents were asked to resign 'temporarily' and were promised reinstatement six months after the scandal ebbed," said yeltsov, citing his unnamed sources.

"government agents recently destroyed case files and obliterated records on the surveillance of opposition politicians and journalists," he added.

the same day gongadze went missing, yeltsov was strip-searched twice while a passenger on a russia-bound train. he was assigned interior ministry bodyguards on his return to kyiv last fall.

interior ministry spokesmen said last summer they were unaware of any investigation of gongadze or his employees.

on jan. 17, interior ministry spokesman viktor sidorenko refused comment on yeltsov's allegations, referring all matters related to gongadze's disappearance to the general prosecutor.

"we are allowed to say nothing about anything relating to the gongadze affair," he said.

others have corroborated the allegation that interior ministry agents watched gongadze and other ukrainska pravda employees.

radio continent general director serhy sholokh, gongadze's former boss, said a colonel from the interior ministry interviewed him on july 10 about whether it was possible that gongadze would associate himself with armed insurrection groups. gongadze's mother, lesya, said she was interviewed by plainclothes agents in her home in lviv about her son's activities.

in meetings jan. 12 with members of the monitoring committee of the parliamentary assembly of the council of europe, prosecutor general mykhailo potebenko said his office handled the complaints of harassment properly.

"we took all legal measures to ensure gongadze's safety after he appealed to us in writing," potebenko said.

potebenko aide aleksy baganets noted that gongadze did not assert that he had been threatened, but merely complained he and his colleagues were being harassed.