You're reading: Cox and Kwasniewski: Prison authorities are lying

The ongoing dispute between ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and her captors over the living conditions of the hospital prison ward where she is incarcerated has reached Europe. 

A special
envoy of the European Parliament monitoring mission has accused the State Penitentiary
Service of misleading the public about their visit to see Tymoshenko.

Former
Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and former president of the European
Parliament Pat Cox, said prison officials distorted the observations and
comments they made during a visit on Feb. 5 to Tymoshenko in her prison ward in
Kharkiv Hospital No. 5.  

Tymoshenko’s
daughter Eugenia, her lawyer as well as opposition members of parliament have raised concerns that her health is
deteriorating after she secluded herself in the ward’s shower room on Jan. 8 in
protest over 24-hour video surveillance.Doctors have diagnosed with her spinal hernia.

In its
statement following the envoy’s visit, the State Penitentiary Service claimed that
Cox and Kwasniewski had an opportunity to visit the rooms where Tymoshenko is
kept, spoke with her for two hours, after which they thanked the officials for
the visit.

“There were
no commentaries, claims, complaints or remarks from the visitors for the
management of the [colony] or the medical establishment,” penitentiary
officials said.   

But the
European envoy called the statement a lie.

“This
quotation is grossly misleading. Indeed, matters of significant and urgent
concern regarding the detention conditions were raised by the monitoring
mission,” reads a statement by Cox and Kwasniewski as quoted by
Interfax-Ukraine.

“Exceptionally
and contrary to our practice, we hereby issue a short clarification in reaction
to the statement released on Feb. 5 by the State Penitentiary Service of
Ukraine,” they added.

Tymoshenko’s
daughter Eugenia who spoke to the envoy after their
visit said they were shocked by the conditions in which the former prime
minister is held at the clinic. “They realized that it’s impossible to get cured
under these conditions,” she said.

Cox and
Kwasniewski started monitoring the court proceedings involving Tymoshenko on
June 11, 2012 under an agreement between Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov
and European Parliament President Martin Schulz.

Tymoshenko
was convicted in October 2011 and sentenced to seven years in prison on abuse-of-office
charges involving a gas deal she brokered with Russia in 2009. Her trial was
widely seen in the West as trumped up to remove her as a competitor in
politics.  

Kyiv Post staff writer
Oksana Grytsenko can be reached of [email protected]