The European Court of Human Rights has stressed that the court has not established political motives behind the arrest of former prime minister of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko.

Director of Common Services at the ECHR Roderick Liddell said this in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

When asked can one consider Tymoshenko's arrest politically motivated, he said: "The court has not made that finding. The court has made a finding that the detention did not pursue one of the purposes committed under the Convention (the European Convention on Human Rights)."

Liddell stressed that the judgment concerns essentially the pre-trial detention and not the criminal proceedings, which will be considered later.

"So this means that different violations were related to the detention and not to the criminal proceeding itself. And what the Court found in relation to that detention is that it did not pursue one of the purposes provided in the Convention. The main reason [for Tymoshenko's detention] found by the court was the lack of respect for the judge and that is not the reason which justifies detention under the Convention. So the reason why the Court found the violation of Article 18 is that the reason given for the detention was not one of the reasons permitted under the Convention. I hope that is sufficiently clear," he explained the ruling on Tymoshenko's case.

When asked about the possible date of the consideration of Tymoshenko's second complaint, the court's representative said that it was not going to happen within the next three or four months.

"It's difficult to give any precise date. It has not yet been formally communicated to the government. When it is formally communicated then decision has to be taken about the procedure - whether it is necessary or not to hold a public hearing. And in those circumstances it could be at least a year or more. This is standard time for this procedure," Liddell explained.

The ECHR ruled on April 30, 2013, that Tymoshenko's arrest violated three paragraphs of Article 5 and also Article 18 of the European Convention.

Apart from the complaint against Tymoshenko's arrest, her defense team also filed a complaint with the ECHR against a violation of her right to a fair and public hearing due to political motives (Articles 6 and 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights), meaning her conviction in the 2009 gas supply case. The proceedings on the complaint were opened in October 2012.

Tymoshenko was arrested during her trial dealing with the conclusion of a 2009 gas supply contract with Russia on August 5, 2011.

On October 11, 2011, the Pechersky District Court in Kyiv sentenced Tymoshenko to seven years in prison for exceeding her authority when signing gas supply contracts with Russia in 2009. She has been serving her sentence at the Kachanivska correctional facility in Kharkiv since late December 2011.

Since May 9, 2012, she has been staying at a Kharkiv hospital and receiving medial treatment there.