Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has asked journalists to come on April 7 to Central Clinical Hospital No. 5 in Kharkiv, where she is undergoing treatment, the press service of the Batkivschyna Party has reported.
"I'm asking you to be present at the time of the drafting by representatives of the Kachanivska penal colony of another untruthful act regarding my alleged 'reluctance' to go to Kyiv for a court hearing, because only your presence can help stop the avalanche of misleading information. I hope that the leadership of the colony will allow you to visit me and will not prevent you from performing your professional duties and recording everything that will happen in the hospital ward ahead of the questioning of another witness in the Scherban case," she said in an open letter, which was posted on the party's Web site on Saturday.
"If that happens, you will be able to make sure that videos that are posted in the media on the orders of the regime are faked and do not reflect my position," Tymoshenko said.
As reported, Yevhen Scherban, a member of the Liberal Party's executive committee and a Verkhovna Rada deputy, was shot dead at the Donetsk airport on his arrival from Moscow on November 3, 1996. The gunmen fled the scene by car. Scherban, his wife and a mechanic died on the spot from gunshot wounds. The plane's flight engineer died later in the hospital. Law enforcement officers ruled out there being political motives behind the case.
In April 2003, the Court of Appeals of Luhansk region sentenced Vadym Bolotskykh to life imprisonment for Scherban's murder.
Scherban's son, Ruslan Scherban, a member of Donetsk Regional Council, said at a press conference on April 4, 2012 that he had passed to the Prosecutor General's Office documents indicating Tymoshenko's and former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko's possible involvement in his father's murder.
Tymoshenko and former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko have categorically denied being involved in the murder.
On January 18, 2013, Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka said at a briefing that the Prosecutor General's Office had finished its investigation into the criminal case on the murder of MP Scherban and that Tymoshenko had been notified of being suspected of having organized the crime, along with Lazarenko. The article of the Criminal Code under which the notification was handed envisages life imprisonment. According to Pshonka, Tymoshenko and Lazarenko paid $2.8 million for Scherban's killing.
