Tymoshenko’s daughter denied meeting with mum in jail

The daughter of Ukraine’s jailed ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on Tuesday said she was denied meeting with her mother in a penal colony where the woman is serving her seven-year sentence. Tymoshenko, 51, convicted in October for power abuse in signing 2009 gas deals with Russia, was transferred from a pre-trial detention to a female penal colony in eastern Ukraine on December 30. “I can’t get a permission to visit my mum. Only investigator could issue this permission, but it’s impossible to get him on the phone,” Yulia Tymoshenko’s daughter Yevgenia said. Tymoshenko’s lawyer Sergei Vlasenko said that there is a 24-hour surveillance in his defendant’s cell. The woman has not had any sleep for almost three days as light is always switched on in the cell, Vlasenko added. Tymoshenko’s lawyers have said her health had deteriorated to the point when she could not get up from bed. Some media reports said she appeared in a wheelchair during the transfer but the pre-trial detention center authorities denied the information. She traveled in a comfortable mini-bus, followed by a car with her 12 suitcases, the press service of the state penitentiary service said.