Court hearing on Maryinkov's questioning in Scherban murder case starts with break and without Tymoshenko

A meeting of the Pechersky District Court of Kyiv hearing a criminal case on the murder of MP Yevhen Scherban started in the absence of the defendant, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

An Interfax-Ukraine reporter said that at the beginning of the meeting the investigating judge, Oksana Tsarevych, read out a statement by the former prime minister addressed to the court in which the judge saw contempt of court.

Tsarevych has currently retired to the deliberation room to decide on Tymoshenko's administrative responsibility "for contempt of court."

Earlier on Wednesday, the Batkivschyna Party posted on its Web site a statement by Tymoshenko addressed to Tsarevych, in which the former prime minister says she is not against being brought to a court meeting on February 13. Tymoshenko also named the witness who should be questioned: "I declare that I did not refuse to be delivered for the court hearing of the case ... to participate in the questioning of witness Maryinkov, which is scheduled for February 13, 2013 at 1400 in the building of Kyiv Court of Appeals."

According to some media, the issue concerns Ihor Maryinkov. In the mid 1990s he was a Donetsk businessman, and previously he was a witness in several high-profile cases on contract killings.