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Presidential commission on pardons refuses to consider Timoshenko's case

However, a number of lawmakers and local media outlets claimed the issue remained on the Commission's agenda

AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky

AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky

KIEV, October 24 (Itar-Tass) - The Ukrainian president's commission on pardons has refused to consider jailed opposition leader, former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko's case, her lawyer Sergei Vlasenko told reporters on Thursday.

However, a number of lawmakers and local media outlets claimed the issue remained on the Commission's agenda. The presidential administration made no comments saying the Commission would report the results of its session.

If it pardons the former prime minister, convicted for exceeding her authority during the signing of gas supply agreements with Russia in January 2009, the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovich, should deliver on his promise and sign the relevant law.

Timoshenko agrees to partial amnesty

Ukraine’s former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, who is serving a seven-year jail term for abuse of occupational powers during the signing of natural gas import agreements with Russia in 2009, has given consent to a partial pardoning, Arseny Yatsenyuk, the leader of the parliamentary faction of Batkivshchina (Fatherland) opposition party said October 22.

“She (Timoshenko) said in public that she was making this serious step,” he said. “She’s prepared to accept a partial pardoning option for the sake of Ukraine’s destiny.”

To be able to take a course of treatment abroad, Timoshenko should be pardoned and this is one of the demands issued by the European Union, Yatsenyuk said.

“Even if she agreed to it (taking treatment abroad in the absence of pardoning - Itar-Tass), that’s something the EU wouldn’t have agreed to,” he said. “An end to political persecutions is a key demand issued by the EU - an end, not just suspension.”

Ukrainian mass media earlier mentioned several possible options of Timoshenko’s release from jail, and their list included the principle of partial pardoning, or actually a curtailment of her jail term from seven to two years.

If applied in practice, however, partial pardoning would go hand-in-glove with ban on occupying any governmental positions over a period of three years upon release from jail.

In addition, a condition the authorities made public earlier said Timoshenko would have to pay a fine of $ 200 million.

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