Oleksandr Tymoshenko, the husband of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, on Thursday, Jan.18 lodged a complaint at a court in Prague against the tapping of phone conversations with his wife, the Ukrainian service of Radio Liberty has reported.
His lawyer, Marina Mahitkova, told Radio Liberty that the complaint had been filed against an unknown criminal, as, according to her, it is currently unclear who recorded the conversation and who posted it online.
The case will be considered by the court in the prescribed manner.
On January 10, 2013, a YouTube user named Anezka posted an audio recording entitled “Julija Tymosenkova mluvi k manzelovi” (Yulia Tymoshenko talks to her husband). Despite the poor quality of the recording, it is possible to understand that the sides are talking to each other about how they spent their holidays, as well as a delay in the endorsement of a decision by the ECHR under Tymoshenko’s complaint due to the maternity leave of Judge Hanna Yudkivska. In particular, the woman in the recording says: “We still need to work on this issue, and the [judge] will cough up such meanness.”
The defense team of the former prime minister is preparing a statement for the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine and Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office demanding to clarify how the audio recording came to be posted on the Internet. Tymoshenko’s lawyer, Oleksandr Plakhotniuk, said that the recording on the Internet had been tampered with and that part of the conversation had been distorted.
According to the press office of the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine, an examination conducted by Kharkiv Bokarius Research Institute of Forensic Examinations found no evidence to suggest an audio recording of a phone conversation between Tymoshenko and her husband, Oleksandr, was tampered with electronically.
Oleksandr Tymoshenko has for two years lived in the Czech Republic, where received political asylum.
