The April 30 ruling of the European Court for Human Rights on Yulia Tymoshenko’s unlawful and politically motivated detention has not improved her status in Ukraine. In fact, the nation and political elite remain further divided in their interpretations and speculations over the ruling and indicated that for Ukraine’s former prime minister, freedom is nowhere in sight.
Tymoshenko’s stay in prison would deal an irreparable blow to Ukraine’s chances for further integration with Europe, including the signing of an Association Agreement this fall and a comprehensive trade agreement, which is a part of it.
Tymoshenko was arrested in August 2011 and later sentenced to seven years in prison for abuse of office while brokering a gas deal with Russia in 2009. She challenged both her arrest and her criminal charges in a separate case, the latter of which is still pending in ECHR.
The ECHR’s April ruling stated that Tymoshenko’s pre-trial detention was arbitrary, that she was deprived of the right to challenge her detention and had no possibility to seek compensation for unlawful deprivation of liberty. The judges, however, dismissed Tymoshenko’s claim of mistreatment during a hospital transfer in April 2012.
The decision was hailed by both the government and the opposition. The government, on one hand, claimed that ECHR had not stated anywhere in the text that Tymoshenko’s detention in August 2011 was politically motivated.
Tymoshenko’s defense and the opposition, on the other hand, pointed out that ECHR said that her imprisonment in August 2011 was driven by motives “other” than criminal prosecution, and referred to similarities between her case and that of Yuriy Lutsenko, a former interior minister in her government. In 2012, the ECHR ruled that his arrest was a case of political prosecution.
Each side has three months to appeal the decision before it becomes final and even less time until the May deadline runs out for Ukraine to meet a number of conditions set by the European Union to enable the signing of the association agreement at the November 28-29 summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. The deadline can be extended into the summer, though.
There are 11 criteria in total, many of which require comprehensive changes in legislation. They include reforming the prosecutor’s office, criminal prosecution and election legislation.
Radoslav Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, said during a visit to Ukraine in April, that so far Ukraine has not performed.
“If the decision (on signing the association agreement) was taken now, the answer would be ‘no’,” he told the Ukrainian media after a meeting with President Viktor Yanukovych, which lasted for several hours.
But even if Ukraine moved on all other issues, keeping Tymoshenko in jail would prevent the European nations from having a consensus on signing. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, said last month that the Yuliya Tymoshenko is one of many remaining issues that need to be solved for the association agreement to be signed.
Many placed their hopes on the ECHR ruling because Yaukovych had indicated previously that the nation will execute it, which many interpreted as a possibility of her release.
Serhiy Vlasenko, Tymoshenko’s top defendant, said immediately affter the ruling that the opposition “ will apply all possible means for releasing Yulia Tymoshenko within the Ukrainian law and restoring her rights. We demand her political and legal rehabilitation.”
But Justice Minister Oleksandr Lavrynovych said that Ukraine had already corrected “the only violation” found by the ECHR by changing the Criminal Procedural Code under which Tymoshenko was convicted, indicating once again that the Ukrainian authorities have no plan to move on Tymoshenko, who remains in a hospital in Kharkiv.
Valentyna Telychenko, Tymoshenko’s representative in ECHR, said that the European court’s decision, once it becomes final, gives her grounds for appealing her sentencing because she was convicted by the same judge who ordered her detention, which was recognized as arbitrary and ill-motivated.
“He was caught red-handed, and now all his rulings on Tymoshenko are under question,” she said.
There are also two more cases pending against Tymoshenko, including a 1996 murder case that could send her to prison for life. They are both at the stage of pre-trial investigation.
Kyiv Post Editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected].
