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Timoshenko’s hospital ward not to be equipped with surveillance cameras

It is planned that Timoshenko will undergo physiotherapy at her ward or at the plasmapheresis room

KIEV, April 4 (Itar-Tass) —— There will be no video surveillance at a hospital ward where Ukraine’s former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko will undergo in-patient treatment and her bodyguards will be only women, acting chief of the Ukrainian State Penitentiary Service’s Kharkov administration Yevgeny Barash said on Wednesday.

“We are ready to take Yulia Vladimirovna [Timoshenko] here for treatment and to ensure proper protection,” he told journalists. “Her bodyguards will be female officers. No handcuffs will be used. There will be no surveillance cameras in the ward. Video surveillance cameras are installed only in the corridors.”

According to Barash, the central clinical hospital in Kharkov will allocate three rooms on the ninth floor to accommodate Timoshenko: a ward with a bed, a wardrobe, a wall lamp, a washstand, a toilet, an electric kettle, a water dispenser and a plasma TV set; a dining room and a meeting room. There are a plasmapheresis and a remedial gymnastics wards on the same floor.

According to the hospital’s chief physician Mikhail Afanasyev, it is planned that Timoshenko will undergo physiotherapy at her ward or at the plasmapheresis room.

In his words, Timoshenko’s stay at the hospital will not tell on its work.

Currently, urgent repairs are done on the hospital’s ninth floor. “The wall between the intensive care ward and the nurses’ room was demolished to allow more space for Timoshenko’s ward. It will be equipped with bullet-proof windows and doors. Law enforcers are supervising the repair works,” the Kiev-based newspaper Segodnya wrote. Medics expect Timoshenko next week.

On Monday, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka ordered the State Penitentiary Service and the Ministry of Healthcare to have Timoshenko, who is service her prison term at the Kachalovskaya penitentiary, undergo treatment at a specialized clinic. According to prosecutors, Timoshenko underwent medical examination at this hospital, which “has all necessary equipment, including foreign-made.”

In the mean time, another Timoshenko’s case will be tried at the Kiev court on April 19. This time, the case concerns Timoshenko’s activities when she headed the Unified Energy Systems (UES) of Ukraine.