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Timoshenko declares civil disobedience action

Ukrainian opposition leader said in the letter that from now on she refuses to speak to prosecutors and investigators

KIEV, January 8 (Itar-Tass) — Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Timoshenko, sentenced to seven years in prison, has declared a personal civil disobedience action. The former prime minister said it in an open letter read out at a briefing by her defense lawyer, parliamentarian Sergei Vlasenko.

Timoshenko said in the letter that from now on she refuses to speak to prosecutors and investigators. “From this day on I will not meet them a single time or give explanations,” the politician wrote.

She also refuses to voluntarily appear in court which she dubbed “inquisitional”. “They will have to deliver me in court with the use of excessive physical force,” she said, stressing that she would resist with all the strength she could muster.

The ex-prime minister said she would not allow any longer to search her or her belongings and would not return to her ward at the clinical hospital of Ukrainian Railways until CCTVs and guards were removed from there.

According to Vlasenko, at the present time Timoshenko is staying in a room for meetings with defendants which has a treatment couch.

“Simulation of justice must be stopped,” the lawyer said. “Yulia Timoshenko does not see herself as an inmate. She considers herself a political hostage of the existing system,” he stressed.

At the present time the former Ukrainian prime minister serves her 7-year term in the Kachanov penal colony in Kharkov for an abuse of power in the signing of a gas agreement with Russia in 2009. She currently undergoes medical treatment at the clinic of Ukrainian Railways in Kharkov.

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