The United States on Tuesday sent a message of support to jailed Ukrainian ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, ignoring new accusations against her by Ukrainian authorities relating to the killing of a business rival 16 years ago.
Tymoshenko is already serving a seven-year jail sentence for
abuse-of-office meted out in October 2011 after a trial which
the West said smacked of selective justice by the leadership of
President Viktor Yanukovich.
Authorities have since piled up fresh charges against the
52-year-old politician, the most serious being last Friday when
Ukraine’s chief prosecutor said she was also suspected of
ordering the contract killing of a parliamentary deputy and
businessman in 1996.
In a letter to Tymoshenko, text of which was released by her
party Batkivshchyna, outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton said she was following Tymoshenko’s plight with great
concern.
“I … want to reaffirm that the United States supports your
immediate release. I hope the New year brings new prospects for
your release and wish you a return to good health,” the letter,
which was passed on to Tymoshenko via the U.S. embassy, said.
The timing and wording of the message suggest the United
States sees the new charges against the opposition leader as
also being part of a political campaign against Tymoshenko, who
is Yanukovich’s fiercest rival after being narrowly defeated by
him in a run-off for the presidency in February 2010.
Tymoshenko, the heroine of street protests in 2004 called
the “Orange Revolution” which overturned the old post-Soviet
order, is serving a jail sentence for abuse of office as prime
minister.
That charge relates to a 2009 deal with Russia which the
present government says saddled the Ukrainian economy with an
exorbitant price for imports of Russian gas. She has denied any
wrongdoing and says she is the victim of a political vendetta.
BACK TROUBLE
The United States and the European Union have supported
Tymoshenko and the EU bloc has shelved agreements on free trade
and political association with Ukraine over the issue.
In what appeared to be the beginning of a new, more serious
case against her, Ukraine’s chief prosecutor Viktor Pshonka last
Friday said that Tymoshenko, a gas trader in the 1990s, had
conspired in ordering a $2.8 million “hit” against powerful
businessman Yevhen Shcherban.
Shcherban was shot dead in 1996 at an airport in the eastern
city of Donetsk by attackers disguised as airport mechanics,
along with his wife and several bystanders.
If convicted of Shcherban’s murder she could face life in
prison, Pshonka said in remarks carried by Interfax news agency.
Since being jailed in the eastern city of Kharkiv,
Tymoshenko has spent much of the time in hospital for back
trouble, causing a second trial on charges of embezzlement and
tax evasion to be postponed repeatedly.
Tymoshenko said on Jan. 8 she was launching a disobedience
campaign in protest at measures such as the installation of
video cameras in her hospital quarters. She has refused to
return to her hospital bed and has been sleeping in a chair in
the hospital corridor and latterly in an adjoining shower room,
her family says.
Tymoshenko’s daughter, Yevgenia, said earlier on Tuesday her
mother’s health was rapidly deteriorating. “Her conditions are
intolerable. Her situation has sharply worsened. She can not
move or stand now,” she told a Kiev news conference.
She denied the new charges against her mother. “They always
accuse political prisoners of criminal deeds. That is why they
are going through the motions of accusing my mother of murder:
the motives are, of course, political,” she said.
