A Kyiv judge late on Dec. 8 issued a fresh arrest order against Ukraine's jailed opposition leader, Yulia Tymoshenko, in connection with fresh criminal charges. The ruling was made upon completion of a grueling court hearing that lasted nearly 12 hours and was held in the former prime minister's jail cell at the Lukyanivka detention facility, Tymoshenko's lawyer Serhiy Vlasenko said.
Since the 51-year old Tymoshenko could not be transported to the hearing from the pre-trial detention jail due to her alleged poor health, Shevchenkivsky district court judge Andriy Trubnikov decided to come and hold the hearing directly in the facility where she is kept.
Vlasenko described the ruling as a farce.
Ukraine’s most popular opposition leader, Tymoshenko was initially arrested on Aug. 5 on contempt of court charges. Two months later – on Oct. 11 – she was sentenced to seven years in prison for exceeding authority as prime minister. Her trial was widely seen in the West and by the opposition as a politically motivated attempt by President Viktor Yanukovych to sideline his main rival. He has repeatedly denied such allegations.
In court on Dec. 7, prosecutors filed a petition to issue a second arrest warrant against her in a separate case launched on Oct. 12 by the Security Service of Ukraine, known by its SBU acronym. The SBU accused her of attempting to embezzle $405 million during the 1990s when she headed a private energy company that was a big player in the supply of gas in Ukraine.
Deputy Prosecutor General Rinat Kuzmin said in a newspaper interview on Dec. 7 that there are altogether 10 criminal cases currently under investigation against the ex-premier. Tymoshenko denies all charges.
Serhiy Vlasenko, Tymoshenko’s lawyer and a lawmaker in her faction in the parliament, said it’s against the law to hold court hearings in per-detention facilities. Before entering the jail on Dec. 8 he called this hearing “another farce” set up by the authorities.
Yevheniya Carr, Tymoshenko’s daughter, says Ukrainian authorities sought to arrest her mother for the second time to make sure she does not get out of jail.
“They are using it as a preventive measure in case she [Tymoshenko] is released after her appeal on Dec. 13,” she said in an address during the Dec. 7 congress of the European People’s Party, with which Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party is affiliated, in Marseilles, France.
Unlike in regular trials open to the general public, in this case neither journalists nor lawmakers were let into the jail to see the proceedings.
Viktor Nikazakov, a lawyer not involved in the case, says that the judge should have taken into consideration that a court hearing in a pre-trial detention facility is closed from outside visitors. Therefore, trials there cannot be open to general public, which is a major requirement for any open trial. “By doing the hearing in Lukyanivka jail the judge violated the law, because in this way the trial is illegally closed from the public,” he said.
Nina Karpachova, the Ukrainian ombudsman for human rights, also said that court hearing cannot be held in jails.
The press service for the state penitentiary system, which is in charge of prisons and pre-trial detention facilities in the country, issued a statement saying that such court hearings in jails are not something new.
According to the statement, in 2010 and 2011 alone 270 court hearings took place in pre-trial detention centers. The SBU also said they do not see anything wrong in it and say that a person can be arrested as many times as a person is charged.
Nikazakov calls such practice “absurd.” According to Ukrainian legislation, a person can be arrested only if there is concern that they could interfere with the investigation, influence witnesses or run away. “It is clear that once you are arrested, there is no legal ground to arrest you again” during a trial, the lawyer said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at [email protected]
