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Checkups don’t confirm claims by Yulia Timoshenko on crude treatment- prosecutor

According to the representative, the bruises developed as a result of pressure with blunt solid articles

KIEV, April 30 (Itar-Tass) — Checkups by the prosecutor’s office of the Kharkov Region did not confirm claims by Yulia Timoshenko that physical force was used with respect to the ex-premier during transportation to a hospital, said high-ranking official of the Ukrainian Prosecutor-General’s Office Vadim Goran, speaking live on “5 Channel” on Sunday evening.

“A great number of checkups have been carried out as of this Monday, and virtually all participants in events were questioned: medics, workers of the penitentiary system, ambulance medics, hospital doctors and other people who could witness some or other events,” he said, noting that claims, put down by Timoshenko in her statement, have not been confirmed during the inspection”.

The representative of the Prosecutor-General’s Office confirmed the conclusion, earlier aired by forensic medicine experts, according to which the bruises on Timoshenko’s body could not have developed on April 20 as she claims.

According to the representative, the bruises developed as a result of pressure with blunt solid articles” or “strikes against such articles”. “But in no way as a result of strikes with a fist in the belly, as she claims. Or could develop as a result of application of small physical force,” Goran added.

He also specified that inspection actions on claims by the ex-premier on the use of physical force, started on April 23, have not been completed yet.

Timoshenko went on a hunger strike on April 20 after (as she claimed) she was roughed up by officers of the Kachanovskaya penitentiary during hospitalization, where she serves the sentence for abuse of power while signing gas agreements with Russia in January 2009.

The Ukrainian mass media published photos on April 27, confirming the presence of haematomas on the ex-premier’s body. The Kharkov prosecutor’s office stated that the above photographs had not been used during the inspection, since they were “received not in an established order”.