The former Prime Minister and main rival of President Viktor Yanukovych in last year’s presidential elections is effectively being tried for a political decision which ended an energy standoff with Russia, restoring the flow of natural gas to Europe in the winter of 2009.
Despite undoubtedly stern words, foreign diplomats, European Union officials and others seem to be waiting a touch too passively. After all, the same meeting of Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Foreign Ministers which discussed the trial on Oct. 10 was expected to extend sanctions against Belarus, among other things, while also adding 15 names to a blacklist against Belarusian officials. The latter has to a large degree been prompted by repressive measures against opponents of Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko in last December’s presidential elections.
Sounding familiar?So it should.
The Danish Helsinki Committee for Human Rights recently issued a second Monitoring Report in which it analyzed four disturbing prosecutions of former members of Yulia Tymoshenko’s government, including that of the former Prime Minister herself. All warrant attention, but one – that of ex-Minister of Internal Affairs, Yury Lutsenko, has been unraveling before our eyes in a way that should send heads rolling.Another application for a change to the restraint measure against Yury Lutsenko, in detention now since December 2010, was rejected on Oct 10. And so, the “trials” continue.
None of the charges against the former Interior Minister involve any personal gain to himself. The accusations presently being examined by the court involve Lutsenko’s driver – Leonid Prystuplyuk.Lutsenko is accused of having “exceeded his authority with grave consequences for the State” by having his driver employed within the Interior Ministry’s Department of Investigative Intelligence, getting him an MIA flat and an early enhanced pension.
Over the last few weeks, eight witnesses summoned by the prosecution have stated in court that they did not receive instructions from Lutsenko, and that in any case the employment of Leonid Prystuplyuk was entirely above board and standard practice.A number of them have explained that any driver accompanying the Minister needs to have the same access to “state secrets” as the Minister, this being the reason for that particular department.Nor, they say, was Prystuplyuk given special treatment.
All drivers of the Minister’s predecessors had been officially employed in the same department.Thus far not one witness has suggested that the initiative to provide Prystuplyuk with a flat came directly from Lutsenko.The pension issue has not yet been raised, yet surely follows from the general position held within the Interior Ministry.
There have been very serious question marks over why Security Service strongmen should have arrested the former minister and strong opposition candidate back in December of last year, and why he still remains in detention as of October 2011 despite doctors from the Health Ministry recommending hospitalization. The grounds are dubious for him to remain in custody at all.
The last few weeks have highlighted a number of other concerns.
Last Friday saw two witnesses not only state in court that neither Lutsenko nor they had committed any offence, but actually testify that they had never told the investigators anything different.
The case of Valery Melnyk, a former aide to the ex-Minister is particularly disturbing. He accused the investigators of having distorted his testimony and also stated that he had been rung a few days before the hearing from the Prosecutor’s Office and advised what he should say in court.He said that there had been two calls and he was told to say what he’d said during the interrogation.He added that he had been phoned from that same number during the investigation.
These are extremely serious allegations and require serious investigation.
Stern words and demands that the trial of Yulia Tymoshenko be “transparent” seem scarcely adequate, when the travesty unfolding bears so little relation to justice.
Halya Coynash is a member of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group.
