KIEV, April 7 (RIA Novosti) – Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has pardoned jailed ex-Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, according to a decree posted on the president’s website on Sunday.
Lutsenko, an ally of jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, was sentenced in February 2012 to four years in prison for abuse of office.
Ukrainian human rights envoy Valeria Lutkovskaya earlier appealed to Yanukovych with a request to pardon Lutsenko due to his deteriorating health condition in prison. Lutsenko was scheduled to leave prison in late 2014.
Following the decree, Lutsenko has been released from jail, the Ukrainian penal service said.
“Today [Sunday] the [presidential] decree on pardoning several convicts was executed in full and all the convicts were freed from prison,” the penal service’s press office reported.
Among those pardoned is former Environmental Minister Georgy Filipchuk.
The pardoning of Lutsenko is an act of mercy toward an illegitimately convicted person, the ex-interior minister’s lawyer Alexei Baganets said.
“I qualify the presidential decree as an act of mercy toward a person who was illegitimately arrested, wrongfully convicted and who contracted a whole range of serious illnesses in prison,” Baganets told RIA Novosti over the phone.
Lutsenko, who was arrested in December 2010, was found guilty of illegally securing a position in the police force for his former driver, and of illegally providing him with a government apartment and pension, as well as of overspending government funds during Police Day celebrations in 2008 and 2009 when he was in office. The total damage caused by Lutsenko to Ukraine’s budget was estimated at $125,000.
The former interior minister has previously denied any wrongdoing, saying his trial was politically motivated. The Ukrainian authorities have rejected the allegation.
