Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's defense team insisted at a court hearing on Tuesday that she be acquitted.
"Considering that we believe that Tymoshenko did not commit any crime, even if the prosecution had asked for a one-year suspended sentence, this would have been too much," lawyer Oleksandr Plakhotniuk told Interfax-Ukraine.
The defense team believes that Tymoshenko must be acquitted, and therefore "any real or suspended punishment is just out of the question," he said.
"We view the indictment itself and naturally the sentence that the prosecutors asked for as unlawful," Plakhotniuk told journalists following the Tuesday hearing.
It was reported earlier that the prosecutors asked the Pechersky District Court to find Tymoshenko guilty of abuse of office and sentence her to seven years in prison.
