The hearing was held in Tymoshenko’s jail cell because she is too ill to travel, according to her lawyer Serhiy Vlasenko, but it was adjourned early after doctor confirmed that her condition had indeed worsened.
“They summoned and questioned the prison doctor who said that Tymoshenko’s condition is serious and that she really can’t continue to take part in this farce. He also said that in the last three hours her pain has increased significantly,” Vlasenko told reporters..
During her trial, Tymoshenko, 51, remained in bed saying she could not move,, according to Vlasenko, who said the judge allowed a break only after a prison doctor certified that the former premier was not in a condition to continue.
“I have never in my life seen a more insolent, cynical and inhuman court,” he said.
Tymoshenko, who led the pro-Western Orange Revolution in 2004, was sentenced to seven years in prison when a court ruled in October that she was guilty of abusing her authority in 2009 to award gas contracts to Russia. Tymoshenko and her supporters say the charges were politically motivated.
The prison-cell hearing followed announcement of 10 new criminal cases against Tymoshenko.
Tymoshenko is charged with intending to bribe Supreme Court judges in 2003, and another case accuses her of ‘exceeding her authority,’ reports Russian news agency ITAR-ITASS.
The former premier will faces charge that she bought Opel automobiles for inflated prices and misused funds from selling greenhouse gas emission credits, the deputy prosecutor said Wednesday.
The United States, European Union, and Russia have all condemned her prison sentence, saying that the charges were trumped up to remove Tymoshenko from the opposition. The ombudsperson of Ukraine’s Parliament has also called her treatment “inhumane.”
Ombudsperson,Nina Karpachova visited Tymoshenko’s cell Wednesday night, and called on prison doctors to give her injections for pain.
She also told journalists that holding the court hearing in a prison cell is a “flagrant violation of the principle of publicity of court proceedings and does not meet Clause 1, Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as restricting the right to a defense, and can be viewed as inhuman treatment.”
Last week, Tymoshenko’s appeal trial was handled in absentia. Her former deputy prime minister Olexandar Turchinov said then that doctors had determined that “she should be urgently hospitalized as her life is in danger.”
“I am not a doctor,” he told journalists. “But Yulia Tymoshenko has not got out of bed for four weeks and she cannot walk unassisted.”
