World news and comment from the Guardian | World news

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  • Kidnapped Ukrainian journalist’s body found near Kiev | World | The Guardian
    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/06/ukrainian-journalist-vasily-sergiyenko-body-found

    The body of a kidnapped journalist who took part in protests against Ukraine’s president Viktor Yanukovych has been found dumped in a forest 60 miles outside the capital Kiev.

    Vasily Sergiyenko – a local journalist and a member of the rightwing Svoboda party – was abducted from his home in the city of Korsun-Shevchenkivskiy on Friday evening Three men reportedly bundled him into a white Lada car, which neighbours had spotted previously.

    A trail of bloodstains were found outside his house.

    Police said his body had been discovered in a shallow grave in a wood, 15km (nine miles) from the city. According to friends from his self-defence unit, one of dozens of local organisations that have sprung up since the anti-Yanukovych protests, Sergiyenko had been brutally tortured before his murder.
    (…)
    Svoboda’s spokesman Yury Syrotiuk said on Sunday he believed Sergiyenko’s death was linked to a feud with a local businessman, Hennady Bobov – a prominent deputy in Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. This claim has not been substantiated.
    (…)
    Syrotiuk added that Svoboda also had a longstanding dispute with representatives of Party of Regions in the Cherkasy region where in the last week alone there were three attacks on Svoboda’s activists.Bobov has denied any involvement in the murder. The businessman offered a reward for information after the journalist vanished and urged the authorities to take the matter under their personal control, local media reported.