You're reading: New charges being brought to Tymoshenko to preempt ECHR ruling – Ukrainian opposition statement

The Ukrainian authorities are hurrying to bring new charges against former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko before the European Court of Human Rights has pronounced its ruling on her prosecution for the 2009 Ukrainian-Russian gas deal, the Ukrainian United Opposition Batkivschyna said in a statement on Friday evening.

“And [President Viktor] Yanukovych’s order on sentencing opposition
leader Yulia Tymoshenko to life, which the prosecutor general announced
tonight, is the culmination of this shame,” Batkivschyna said.

“Understanding that the European Court of Human Rights will put an
end to the dirty and empty tricks against Yulia Tymoshenko in the near
future, Yanukovych’s associates have resorted to a desperately brazen
and mendacious step,” it said.

“They do not conceal any more that they want to hold not only the
opposition leader but the entire Ukraine behind bars for life,” it said.

Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka said at a news conference earlier
on Friday that the Prosecutor General’s Office had completed an
investigation into the 1996 murder of parliamentarian Yevhen Scherban
and notified Tymoshenko on Friday that she and former Prime Minister
Pavlo Lazarenko are suspected of organizing this murder for mercenary
reasons.

“The [Criminal Code] article under which Tymoshenko is suspected
[Criminal Code Article 93] carries this punishment [life sentence] for
organizing a murder, but it is only a court that will make a decision on
this,” he said.

Scherban, a member of the Liberal Party’s executive committee and a
Verkhovna Rada deputy, was shot and killed at the Donetsk airport upon
his arrival from Moscow on November 3, 1996.

The gunmen fled the scene in a car. Scherban, his wife and a mechanic
died on the spot from gunshot wounds. The plane’s flight engineer died
in the hospital. The law enforcement ruled out political motives behind
the case.

The Luhansk Regional Court of Appeals sentenced Vadym Bolotskykh to life for doing Scherban’s killing in April 2003.

Yevhen Scherban’s son, Ruslan Scherban, said at a press conference on
April 4, 2012, that he had provided the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s
Office’s with documents indicating that Tymoshenko and Lazarenko might
have played a role in killing his father. Tymoshenko and Lazarenko
categorically dismissed the accusations.