Representatives of the opposition parliamentary factions at the working group for drawing up a bill on the treatment of convicts abroad have registered in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, another bill amending some laws of Ukraine on humanization of the execution of some punishments.

According to a posting on the parliament's Web site, bill No. 3599 was registered on Tuesday. MPs Andriy Kozhemiakin, Hennadiy Moskal, Iryna Lutsenko (all from the Batkivschyna faction), Iryna Heraschenko (UDAR faction), and Andriy Mischenko (Svoboda faction) are the authors of the document.

The text of the bill has not been posted on the parliament's Web site. However, the Batkivschyna party Web site has posted a picture of the bill's text.

The bill suggests adding Article 84-1 to the Ukrainian Criminal Code, which stipulates that "a person who suffered a disease described in Article 84 Part 2 of this Code or another one while serving a limited term of imprisonment, which makes it impossible for them to observe the regime of imprisonment stipulated by the criminal correction legislation, may be exempted from serving the term if the treatment of such a disease can be arranged at a foreign medical institution and the absence of such treatment poses danger to the convict's life or may entail grave consequences for their health."

A court may rule to exempt such a convict from serving their term at their own request or at a request by their relatives or the head of the administration of the relevant correctional facility, provided written consent of a foreign medical institution to admit the said patient for treatment and findings of a medical board involved in the convict's treatment, the bill says.

"The time during which a convict receives medical treatment shall be counted toward the remainder of the term not yet served, with one day of treatment regarded as one day of imprisonment," the bill says.

After the completion of treatment, a court would exempt the person from serving the remainder of the term if the treatment took more than the remainder of the term. Otherwise, a court may exempt such a convict from serving the remainder of the term depending on treatment results and the convict's behavior.

Such treatment shall be financed by the convict or their relatives.

The bill also stipulates that among those who cannot receive treatment abroad should be convicts who committed a serious premeditated crime before the record of their similar prior crime was expunged, or those who committed such crimes after they were exempted from serving their prison term or after their punishment was replaced by a milder one.

In the previous two weeks, numerous bills entitling Ukrainian prison convicts to receive medical treatment abroad, essentially aimed at resolving the problem of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, have been filed with the parliament but were then retracted before finalization.