Tymoshenko fights her conviction in Ukraine appeals court
By Pavel Polityuk
KYIV (Reuters) – Defence lawyers for Ukrainian ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko urged an appeals court on Thursday to quash her conviction for abuse of office, but prosecutors insisted she had damaged the state by brokering a disadvantageous gas deal with Russia.
During a day-long hearing, the opposition leader’s defence argued that negotiating the gas agreement with Russia in 2009 as prime minister constituted a political act which did not amount to criminal action by her.
The prosecution said the evidence produced at her trial last year bore out the charge that she had inflicted huge damage on the state.
The hearing was later adjourned until August 21.
Tymoshenko’s jailing for seven years last October soured the former Soviet republic’s relations with the European Union, which sees her as a victim of selective justice by President Viktor Yanukovich, her political foe.
But, with a parliamentary election set for October 28, the Yanukovich leadership has shown no signs of releasing her and are instead piling up other charges against her.
In a separate trial, which has been adjourned several times because of back trouble which has confined her to hospital, she is accused of embezzlement and tax evasion going back to alleged offences when she was in business in the 1990s.
With Tymoshenko absent in a state-run hospital in the city of Kharkiv, the appeal hearing in Kyiv has also been adjourned several times. But it went ahead on Thursday after her lawyers said Tymoshenko wanted proceedings to continue in her absence.
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