A new report has slammed Ukraine’s criminal justice system for what it describes as the unfair, unjustified, inhumane and politically motivated criminal investigations and trials against four former members of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s 2007-2010 government.
What emerges from the report, which made public on Aug. 12 by the Danish Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, is how far the criminal justice system functioning under President Viktor Yanukovych’s rule is from European standards.
Ukraine’s General Prosecutor’s Office was not immediately able to comment on the report’s findings.
The ‘Legal Monitoring in Ukraine II’ report studied the current criminal trials against four former officials that are currently being tried for wrongdoing.
They include three that are currently jailed during their trial: Tymoshenko, now an opposition leader, former acting Defense Minister Valeriy Ivashchenko and former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko. The report’s experts also studied the case of former First Deputy Justice Minister Yevhen Korniychuk.
He has been released after spending time this year in pre-trial confinement this year, but is still on trial.
The 32-page report is based on first-hand observations by Mikael Lyngbo, a former Danish chief of police and former European Union and international organization officer in Albania, Sudan, Iraq and South Africa.
The report reserves its harshest criticism for criminalization of what it says would elsewhere be considered normal political decisions. The very first observation in the report is that the “charges are criminalizing normal political decisions with which the present government disagrees.” The report goes on to say that “most of the charges are of a character which would never be considered a criminal offense in countries with a different legal tradition.”
Out of 19 observations, only three were found not to have violated defendants’ rights. And while the report focuses solely on four defendants, it warns that its observations will “probably be valid for other similar cases.”
Time and time again, the report depicts Ukraine’s criminal justice system as adrift from the standards of the European Union, with which Ukraine seeks closer relations. Prosecutors and the judiciary violate numerous articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, a document applicable to Ukraine since September 1997.
Speaking to the Kyiv Post from Denmark, Lyngbo described the detention of the four defendants as a “key problem.” Whereas European practice presumes in favor of release unless convincing evidence demonstrates the need for ongoing detention, Ukrainian practice detains the accused for an unlimited and unpredictable time and violates “one of the basic elements of the rule of law, the principle of legal certainty.”
The report sees the arrest of Tymoshenko on Aug. 5 as trying to force Tymoshenko into “cooperation through detention.”
The report criticizes the violation of Tymoshenko’s and Lutsenko’s right to defense because of the very short period her legal team has had to prepare. It also blasts the judiciary’s lack of independence and its impartiality as well as the selection of judges, which is said to violate both Ukrainian and international law.
Lyngbo bemoaned the general lack of understanding of basic concepts of rule of law and the rights of the defense.
“Wherever I looked, as a casual observer,” Lynbgo said, “there was a lack of understanding as to the presumption of innocence, the lack of reasonable working conditions for the defense.”
With particular regard to the trial and treatment of Ivashchenko, the report criticizes the labyrinthine process and three months it took for him to be diagnosed after his first complaint. It also claims restrictions on Ivashchenko’s family visits are violations of his right to family life Inside the courtroom things aren’t much better.
Handcuffing and caging three of the four defendants without evidence of violent tendencies or pasts, violate the prohibition on torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the report claims.
However, Lyngbo defends the actions of the judges’ decisions to remove Tymoshenko and Lutsenko from the court room and to not provide a jury.
