Tymoshenko to decide on February 11 whether she will attend witness interrogation on Scherban case, says lawyer

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko will decide on February 11 whether she will attend the interrogation of a witness on the criminal case on the murder of Ukrainian parliamentarian Yevhen Scherban due on February 13, the ex-premier's defense lawyer Serhiy Vlasenko has said.

"We have discussed certain issues, we shared our opinions and information and took a break until Monday in order to think about our further actions in this situation… Yulia Volodymyrivna will make a decision on Monday [February 11]," Vlasenko told an Interfax-Ukraine reporter following a meeting with Tymoshenko at Kharkiv-based Central Clinical Hospital No. 5 on Friday.

He described the ruling of Judge Oksana Tsarevych to oblige the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine to ensure that Tymoshenko is taken to Kyiv Court of Appeals on February 13 as "absolutely illegal."

As reported, on February 7, judge of Kyiv Pechersky District Court Oksana Tsarevych partially satisfied the ex-premier's petition and ruled to put off until February 13 investigatory proceedings on the criminal case on the murder of Scherban. The court also ordered the prison service to take Tymoshenko to a court sitting of Kyiv Court of Appeals.

Kyiv Pechersky District Court on October 11, 2011, sentenced Tymoshenko to seven years in prison for exceeding her powers when signing gas supply contracts with Russia in 2009. She has served her sentence in the Kharkiv Kachanivska Penal Colony since late December 2011.

Tymoshenko is currently undergoing treatment at Kharkiv-based Central Clinical Hospital No. 5.

Ukraine's Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka announced on January 18, 2013, that the Prosecutor General's Office had completed an investigation into Scherban's murder and notified Tymoshenko that she was suspected, along with former Prime Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Lazarenko, of organizing the parliamentarian's killing. Pshonka said also that the case concerning Scherban's murder had been combined with the case on the embezzlement of budget money for settling the United Energy Systems of Ukraine's (UESU) debts to the Russian Defense Ministry.

Tymoshenko and Lazarenko categorically reject the accusations.

Yevhen Scherban, a member of the Liberal Party's executive committee and a parliamentarian, was gunned down while disembarking from a plane at the Donetsk airport on November 3, 1996. The killers fled the scene in a car. Scherban, his wife and a mechanic died from injuries at the scene. The plane's flight engineer suffered injuries to his neck and later died in a hospital. The law enforcement agencies ruled out a political motive behind the crime at the time.