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Ukrainian State Penitentiary Service doesn’t allow EU ambassador to meet Timoshenko

Teixeira came to the hospital on Sunday and the police let him in. Yet he had no access to Timoshenko

KIEV, June 17 (Itar-Tass) —— The Ukrainian State Penitentiary Service has denied access to the Kharkov Ukrzheldorogi clinic to head of the EU delegation to Ukraine Jose Manuel Pinto Teixeira, who wanted to meet with ex-Ukrainian Prime Minister, opposition leader Yulia Timoshenko.

Teixeira came to the hospital on Sunday and the police let him in. Yet he had no access to Timoshenko.

He said he had tried to meet with Timoshenko with the consent of the Ukrainian government, but the Ukrainian State Penitentiary Service had been denying him the meeting for ten months under various pretexts. The latest refusal was based on the allegation that Teixeira had stopped being the EU ambassador to Ukraine. He said though that his mission would end in September.

European Parliament deputies Werner Schulz and Rebecca Harms and about 50 activists unfolded signs appealing for the release of all political prisoners and fair game in soccer and politics at the Kharkov stadium on June 13 during a Netherlands vs. Germany match.

Earlier the European Parliament assigned as observers to the court hearing of the Timoshenko appeal its ex-President Pat Cox and former Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski. Their mandate was broadened later to the monitoring of the trials of ex-Ukrainian Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko and former Defense Minister Valery Ivashchenko.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov said that the sending of European Parliament observers Cox and Kwasniewski was the first attempt of Europe to analyze the essence of the Timoshenko case.

Timoshenko is serving a seven-year-term in Kharkov after the court sentenced her on October 11, 2011, for exceeding the authority in the signing of the gas contracts with Russia in 2009. She has been receiving therapy at the Kharkov Ukrzheldorogi hospital since May 9.

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