THE CZECH Republic has granted political asylum to the husband of Yulia Tymoshenko, the Ukrainian opposition leader who has been jailed as part of an alleged persecution campaign by her country’s president.
“Mr [Oleksander] Tymoshenko filed a request for political asylum with the interior ministry several months ago . . . and the request was granted today,” Czech interior minister Jan Kubice said yesterday.
Mr Tymoshenko’s lawyer said he had sought asylum because he was being unfairly investigated in a case linked to his wife’s old business dealings, in an attempt by Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich to put more pressure on her.
Her political party accused Mr Yanukovich of “amoral attempts to pressure and torment Yulia Tymoshenko by persecuting her loved ones and family”.
Ms Tymoshenko is three months into a seven-year jail sentence for abusing her power in 2009 when, as prime minister, she signed a gas supply deal with Russia that prosecutors say was ruinously expensive for Ukraine.
Investigators are also looking into allegations that in the 1990s, when she was boss of a major gas firm, she was involved in corruption and in the murder of a rival.
She denies the claims and insists they are part of Mr Yanukovich’s bid to discredit and sideline his most popular and outspoken rival. The European Union has told Kiev it sees the campaign against her as politically motivated and a major impediment to closer relations.
Several of Ms Tymoshenko’s allies have also been investigated or charged since Mr Yanukovich came to power in 2010, and her former economics minister Bohdan Danylyshin was given political asylum by the Czech Republic early last year. Many people saw Mr Danylyshin’s case as the trigger for Ukraine’s expulsion of two Czech diplomats for espionage last spring. Ms Tymoshenko was a leader of the so-called Orange Revolution, which in 2004 overturned Mr Yanukovich’s fraudulent election “victory” and swept pro-western leaders into power.
Their subsequent squabbling and failure to deliver vital reforms allowed Mr Yanukovich to mount a comeback, and he narrowly beat Ms Tymoshenko in the 2010 presidential vote.
Ms Tymoshenko’s lawyer says she is unwell and needs to be treated by foreign doctors, and that her cell is constantly lit and monitored by video camera – conditions he calls tantamount to “torture”.
