The Batkivschyna Party has said that the State Penitentiary Service and the Health Ministry are spreading false information regarding the treatment of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and says it sees this as provocation by the authorities.
“The authorities are again arranging provocations over the subject of the treatment of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, who is a political prisoner and who was illegally convicted on a case trumped up on the order of Bankova Street [the street in Kyiv where the presidential administration is located],” the party said in a statement posted on its official Web site on Tuesday.
Batkivschyna said that it is “indignant about the constant lies spread about Yulia Tymoshenko by the press services of the penitentiary service and the Health Ministry, and condemns an attempt by the penitentiary service to bring the treatment of the opposition leader into line with the dates of trials determined by the government of [President Viktor] Yanukovych.”
“No new commissions are needed to determine the process of Tymoshenko’s further rehabilitation, as there is no confidence in them, while the procedures and methods of treatments are prescribed by doctors from the Charite Clinic,” reads the statement.
As reported, the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine asked the Health Ministry to set up a joint commission made up of medical experts of the ministry, the penitentiary service, and doctors of Berlin-based Charite Clinic to decide on the time period needed for the rehabilitation of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in the Kharkiv hospital in which she is being treated.
On October 11, 2011, Pechersky District Court in Kyiv sentenced Tymoshenko to seven years in prison for abuse of office when signing gas contracts with Russia in 2009. She has been serving her prison term in the Kachanivska penal colony in Kharkiv since the end of December 2011.
The defense team has repeatedly stated that Tymoshenko had health problems even during her stay in Kyiv’s pre-trial detention center, and demanded that she be examined by independent doctors, because Tymoshenko does not trust Ukrainian doctors. On May 9, Tymoshenko was moved from the prison to Central Clinical Hospital No. 5 in Kharkiv. The procedures for the ex-premier’s treatment in hospital have been selected by German doctors from the Charite Clinic.
The trial in the criminal case against Tymoshenko on the activities of the UESU under her management is taking place in Kharkiv.
Tymoshenko hasn’t attended court sittings during the time of her stay in prison and in hospital.
