PRAGUE — A senior Czech official says the husband of jailed former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is seeking political asylum in the Czech Republic.
Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg confirmed that Tymoshenko’s husband Oleksandr has applied for asylum. The minister told Czech public radio Friday it was likely he would get it.
His ministry and the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of granting asylum, declined to immediately comment Friday.
The Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying it is immensely interested in retaining good relations with Ukraine.
Tymoshenko, Ukraine’s top opposition leader and a former presidential candidate, was sentenced to seven years in jail in October in a trial the West has condemned as politically motivated. She has reportedly been in poor health and denied medical care while locked up in a Kiev prison.
A year ago, the Czech Republic granted political asylum to Ukraine’s former Economics Minister Bohdan Danylyshin, one of Tymoshenko’s allies, who was charged with abuse of office in his country.
The move strained relations between the two countries.
According to the Czech register of companies, a man called Oleksandr Tymoshenko is listed as a co-owner of International Industrial Projects SRO, a company based in the northern Czech city of Usti nad Labem.
