Ukraine’s High Court upheld on Wednesday the conviction of jailed former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to seven years in prison for abuse of office.
“The judges came to the conclusion that there are no grounds for the appeal to be justified,” a judge said.
Tymoshenko was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison in October 2011 for overreaching her authority in signing a gas deal with Russia in 2009. The deal obliged Ukraine to buy larger amounts of gas than it now needs, and at higher prices than it says is fair.
Tymoshenko’s lawyers in their appeal asked the court to acquit the former prime minister and close the criminal case against her due to the lack of evidence. Prosecutors insisted that the panel of judges leave the sentence unchanged.
Defense team lawyer Serhiy Vlasenko said the court ruling will be appealed in the European Court of Human Rights.
“Literally by the end of this week we will complete an addition to the appeal concerning the lack of justice for Yulia Tymoshenko in Ukraine and hand it over to the European Court of Human Rights,” he said.
The lawyer added that the court’s decision was “in fact President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision” designed to show that he will keep Tymoshenko, his main political rival, in prison for “as long as it takes.”
A leader of Ukraine’s united opposition Oleksandr Turchynov said the verdict “had nothing to do with justice” and was a “political sentencing carried out on the presidential administration’s order.”
Another opposition leader, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, said he was “convinced that the European court will rule in favor of Tymoshenko.”
The President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Jean-Claude Mignon, expressed his disappointment with the verdict.
“The Assembly has stated on several occasions that her [Tymoshenko] conviction in the gas case amounts to the criminalization of normal political decision-making. Given the many questions that have been raised with regard to the Court proceedings that led to her conviction, we – as well as many other friends of Ukraine – had expected that the Court of Cassation would accept her appeal,” Mignon and the co-rapporteurs for Ukraine, Mailis Reps and Marietta de Pourbaix-Lundin, said in a joint communique.
They urged Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to intervene in the case of the convicted former premier.
“President Yanukovich has made it clear to the co-rapporteurs that he would be ready to intervene in this case if her appeal was rejected by the Court of Cassation. We therefore call upon him to keep his word without delay in order to resolve the issue of the imprisoned former government members. These cases should not be allowed to overshadow the upcoming elections,” the statement reads.
The co-rapporteurs also signaled their intention to visit Ukraine before the next Assembly session in order to discuss possible political avenues to resolve this issue in line with Council of Europe standards.
