(Vatican Radio) Ukraine's chief prosecutor has charged jailed opposition leader Yulia
Tymoshenko with murder in what is seen as another blow to the veteran politician,
who the West claims is a victim of a political vendetta by the current government.
Former Prime Minister Tymoshenko, a powerful gas trader in the 1990s,
and Pavlo Lazarenko, another former prime minister, allegedly ordered the killing
of a business rival.
Investigators say they paid $2.8 million to kill
Yevhen Shcherban, a legislator and businessman, who died in a hail of bullets in 1996
as he stepped off a plane.
In a statement, Chief Prosecutor Viktor Pshonka
said investigators had gone to jailed Tymoshenko to present her with the suspicions
about the crime.
The announcement came after a court adjourned a second trial
against Tymoshenko for tax evasion, as her defense counsel warned her health had declined
to a "critical" level.
LONG SENTENCE
Since 2011, Tymoshenko is already
serving a seven-year jail sentence for abuse of office, charges she strongly denies.
The
opposition and Western governments say the 52-year-old politician is the victim of
a witch-hunt by the leadership of President Viktor Yanukovich, who narrowly beat her
in a run-off for the presidency in February 2010.
Critics claim however that
it was widely known that Tymoshenko had controversial dealings with Lazarenko, who
has been detained in the United States for money laundering.
The latest
case comes as a major setback for Tymoshenko, who was once a hero of street protests
in 2004, known as the “Orange Revolution”. It overturned the old post-Soviet order
and doomed Yanukovich's first bid for the presidency. But nearly a decade later he
is in charge of the Ukraine amid mounting political and social tensions.