The deadline for a ruling by the Court of Appeals on former Ukrainian Premier Yulia Tymoshenko's gas supply case is at the end of the first week of February 2012, the premier's lawyer and MP Serhiy Vlasenko has said.
"Starting from Thursday [Oct. 27], Kyiv Pechersky District Court had to send these appeals [from Yulia Tymoshenko and her lawyers] and another participants of the process in order to receive written objections from them. Five days are given for that, according to Ukrainian law. After that, the court [Pechersky District] is to send the materials to Kyiv Court of Appeals within seven days, and it will consider this case no earlier than in a month, but not later than three months from the moment they received the case. This is an approximate calendar," Vlasenko told Moscow Echo radio on Sunday.
"It means that if we start to count from Thursday then, at the minimum in one-and-a-half months, and at the maximum in three months, the case has to be considered by the Court of Appeals," the lawyer said.
He also said he doubts the Court of Appeals will pass a fair decision.
"We don’t expect fairness from the Court of Appeals, we are likely to see three Judge Kireyevs there, who just together will do the same… And then the verdict of the first court will be upheld – an absolutely absurd verdict… Then we will have no another legal path but to appeal against this decision to the Higher Specialized Court for the Consideration of Civic and Criminal Cases. Then, theoretically, it’s possible to appeal to the Supreme Court [of Ukraine], and of course to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, or search for other legal forms to defend rights and interests of Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko," Vlasenko said.
The lawyer also noted that the decriminalization of the article of the Criminal Code under which Tymoshenko was sentenced, is "a political way" and that he believes that "the decriminalization issue completely and finally depends on the will of one man – the Ukrainian president, since, unfortunately, parliament has ceased to be a place in which independent decisions are taken in Ukraine."
Vlasenko said he is not being prevented from visiting Tymoshenko in the pre-trial detention center, but, "the judge that gives permission simply forbids all another people apart from her lawyers to meet with Yulia Volodymyrivna without any motivation, her communication with the outside world are carried out just via lawyers, including issues of the governance of the BYT-Batkivschyna party."
Asked if rumors that Tymoshenko has Russian citizenship are true, Vlasenko said he "knows nothing about either these rumors or [the issue of] citizenship."
