New appeal from Lutsenko's lawyers to ECHR complete, soon to be filed, says his wife
A second application on the violation of the rights of former Ukrainian Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko will soon be submitted to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Lutsenko's wife and defense lawyer, Batkivschyna MP Iryna Lutsenko, has said live on Ukrainian television's Channel 5.
"The application to the European Court [of Human Rights] is complete. This will be the second application and the main one on which we're pinning our hopes. This is an appeal against the unfairness of the trial," Lutsenko said.
She said she was confident that the new appeal would be won and believes that "there is a 99% hope that after our victory in the European Court [of Human Rights], before Lutsenko's two-year prison term expires, we will be able, (but it all depends on the timing of consideration at the European Court), to hope that Lutsenko will be released from prison earlier."
However, she said that in the first case filed at the European Court of Human Rights regarding Lutsenko's illegal arrest, which Ukraine lost, "the authorities are insistently demanding that we and Lutsenko provide the details of where they can transfer the funds."
As reported, on July 3, 2012, the ECHR issued a ruling declaring that the arrest of Lutsenko was a violation of his human rights. Moreover, the court ordered the Ukrainian government to pay EUR 15,000 to the ex-minister as compensation for moral damages.
On October 1, 2012, the government filed a motion to review the ECHR decision in the Lutsenko versus Ukraine case. The Ukrainian government referred to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms dated November 4, 1950 in the motion.
On November 20, the European Court upheld its ruling on Lutsenko's case by rejecting the Ukrainian government's motion.
Lutsenko was arrested on December 26, 2010. He was held at Kyiv's pre-trial detention center. The ex-minister's defense team appealed against Lutsenko's arrest to the ECHR.
Kyiv's Pechersky District Court found Lutsenko guilty of a number of counts of abuse of office and sentenced him to four years in prison on February 27, 2012. On August 31, 2012, he was taken to the penitentiary in Chernihiv region.
Lutsenko was also charged with the extension of an investigative case concerning Valentyn Davydenko, the driver of former SBU First Deputy Chief Volodymyr Satsiuk, as part of an investigation into the poisoning of then presidential candidate Viktor Yuschenko on August 17, 2012 by Pechersky Court. The court sentenced Lutsenko to two years in prison.