You're reading: Tymoshenko allowed to use telephone

Ukraine's former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who is serving a seven-year jail term in Kharkiv, has been allowed to make a phone call, the Ukrainian Penitentiary Service reports.

“Yesterday, convict Tymoshenko was granted exceptional permission to make a telephone call. She talked to two persons,” the report says.

The law allows Tymoshenko to use a stationary telephone in a special room in the penitentiary. Prison officers are banned from lending convicts their mobile phones for private calls.

On July 18, the Penitentiary Service reported that Tymoshenko had demanded that unless she was granted a phone call, she would smash the window in her hospital ward.

Tymoshenko’s Batkivschyna Party claims that she has been deprived of an opportunity to use the telephone since she was moved to the Kachanivska colony last December.