You're reading: Ukraine prison service conceals alleged hepatitis diagnosis from Lutsenko, says wife

Jailed former Ukrainian interior minister Yuriy Lutsenko was diagnosed with viral hepatitis in September 2011, but the State Penitentiary Service has kept this secret from him, his wife said on April 12, expressing suspicion he had picked up the virus through a blood transfusion at his jail's medical unit.

"Since he was refusing to have blood tests, he was given the results of tests that were administered on September 19, 2011, when blood tests for various types of viral hepatitis were done at the detention center," Iryna Lutsenko told a news conference in Kyiv. "TTV [transfusion-transmitted virus] hepatitis was detected."

She said her husband had been advised to sign an obligation not to disclose information on his health condition to anyone, though he "made a reservation that he was allowed to share this information with his wife, Iryna Lutsenko, alone."

A checkup on April 11 showed that the damaged part of Lutsenko’s liver had nearly doubled in size, the ex-minister’s wife Lutsenko said.

She said she, Yuriy Lutsenko and his lawyer at the European Court of Human Rights qualified this conduct on the part of the Penitentiary Service as torture and humiliation. "A statement to this effect will shortly be considered in the European Court of Human Rights," Iryna Lutsenko said. "I think we will win that action."

Iryna Lutsenko also said she planned to complain about the Penitentiary Service to the Office of the Prosecutor General and to demand that the latter prosecute the Penitentiary Service for alleged deliberate denial of medical assistance to her husband.