Jailed Ukrainian ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is a witness in a case related to the 1996 murder of Ukrainian lawmaker and businessman, Yevhen Shcherban, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, Viktor Pshonka, said on Wednesday.
“There are some new evidence [in the case], including testimony by Shcherban’s son, which investigators have to look into,” he told journalists in Kiev, when asked whether any charges had been brought against Tymoshenko in the case.
"In this situation, if investigative activities involve Tymoshenko, she has the status of a witness,” he said, adding that the investigation was “aimed at finding out who ordered this grave crime.”
Shcherban, the Supreme Rada lawmaker, who also headed Ukraine’s Aton financial corporation, was shot dead with his wife at an airport in eastern Ukraine in November 1996.
Ukraine's deputy prosecutor Renat Kuzmin said in April there was evidence that Tymoshenko and another former prime minister, Pavlo Lazarenko, had paid for the murder.
Tymoshenko, the heroine of Ukraine's 2004 pro-democracy Orange revolution, was jailed for seven years for abuse of office at a controversial trial in October 2011, which was condemned by Russia and Western governments as politically motivated. She is also facing a separate trial for embezzlement and tax evasion.
Earlier this month, Tymoshenko, who is suffering from severe back pain, was moved from a penal colony in eastern Ukraine, where she is serving her sentence, to a hospital.
Ukraine’s media have reported that prosecutors are waiting for Tymoshenko’s health to improve, before bringing new charges against her in connection with Shcherban’s murder. Tymoshenko has described the allegations about her involvement as "absurd."
