With the entry into force of a new Criminal Procedure Code, the prosecution has received the right to force Ukraine's third president (2005 - 2010) Viktor Yuschenko into giving his blood sample for tests for the investigation into his alleged poisoning, but the Prosecutor General's Office still hopes the president will take blood test voluntary.
“The new Code of Criminal Procedure provides for the compulsory sampling [of blood], and in this regard we will return to the issue of the need to obtain blood samples. Once again, we offer him (Yuschenko) to take blood tests,” Ukraine’s First Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin said on Wednesday at a hotline conference organized by the Komsomolskaya Pravda v Ukraine newspaper.
However, he said he didn’t know how exactly one could force Yuschenko into having his blood taken for test.
“How can we do this in practice? The law gives us such authority, but we hope that he will take a blood test voluntary,” Kuzmin added.
According to him, if they do not receive the blood samples, the investigation will be closed.
It was reported that on September 5, 2004, Yuschenko, a presidential candidate at the time, met with senior Ukrainian security officers, following which he fell ill and on September 10 was hospitalized in Vienna. Doctors said Yuschenko was poisoned with dioxin, and that the poison had got in the patient’s system approximately five days before hospitalized. A number of tests was carried out later. In late May 2006, Yuschenko again tested positive for dioxin.
At the same time, lately Yuschenko has ignored prosecutors’ request to the do the blood test as part of an inquiry into his poisoning.
In early June, Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka said the inquiry into the poisoning of Viktor Yuschenko could be closed by the end of 2012.
