The results of an investigation conducted by the Kharkiv Region Prosecutor's Office have not confirmed former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's claims of violence, Vadym Horan, the director of the law enforcement department of the Prosecutor General's Office, told TV Channel Five on Sunday evening.
"The Code of Criminal Procedure gives us ten days to carry out an inquiry and reach a decision," he said.
"Multiple checks have already been conducted and almost all participants in the events have been questioned, including doctors, penitentiary system employees, the ambulance team who transported Yulia Volodymyrivna [Tymoshenko], hospital doctors and other people who could have witnessed these events," the official said.
"The facts mentioned by Yulia Volodymyrivna in her statement have not been confirmed," Horan said.
Court doctors have concluded that Tymoshenko’s bruises could not have appeared on April 20, as she claims, he said.
"Furthermore, the mechanism and localization of these bruises indicates that they appeared as a result of pressing against blunt solid objects or bumping into them. But they could not have appeared as a result of being hit in the stomach, as she claims. They could have formed as a result of the use of insignificant physical force," he said.
Following Tymoshenko’s rejection of a forensic medical examination, such an examination was conducted "based on medical documents, as well as the act compiled by prison doctors, who documented the presence of bodily harm she [Tymoshenko] showed them," Horan said.
During the check, experts did not use the photographs taken by former commissioner for human rights Nina Karpachova because they "were obtained in violation of the rules," he said.
Karpachova’s conclusion was not taken into consideration either, he said.
"This document cannot be called official because it was not compiled by the specialists in charge of these issues," Horan said.
Photographs showing Tymoshenko’s bruises were published in the media last Friday. The photographs were taken on April 25. Tymoshenko claims that these bruises were inflicted by prison guards who took her to the hospital against her will on April 20.
