Strasbourg, Kyiv courts consider Tymoshenko cases

The European Court for Human Rights conducted a public hearing yesterday into allegations brought forward by former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko against Ukraine that her prosecution and detention in 2011 were in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. Following yesterday’s hearing, the court will hold closed deliberations and will announce a ruling at a later stage (typically, in about 6-8 weeks). Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Higher Specialized Court for Civil and Criminal Cases ended hearings yesterday on a cassation case from Tymoshenko and scheduled to announce a ruling tomorrow. Tymoshenko was arrested in August 2011 and handed down a seven year jail term in October 2011 for her role in negotiating a gas supply contract with Russia in 2009.

Brad Wells: We think the ECHR will reach a decision in favor of Tymoshenko, especially after the court’s July ruling in favor of another jailed opposition figure, former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, in a broadly similar case. The ECHR found seven violations of the European Convention on Human Rights (including rights to liberty, to be informed of the reasons for arrest and to challenge the lawfulness of detention) and ordered Ukraine to pay EUR 15,000 in moral damages to Lutsenko. Notably though, the nature of Tymoshenko’s complaint, like Lutsenko’s, regards her arrest and detention before the trial and will have no effect on her prison term. In terms of the Ukrainian case, if the court tomorrow denies Tymoshenko’s appeal (as is widely expected), it would open the door though for her lawyers to appeal her actual sentence to the ECHR, which they have said they plan to do.