Lutsenko is pardoned

A little backstory and details of the rapidly pardon of Yuri Lutsenko.

The text of the decree on the pardon of six convicts, including two oppositionists - the former Minister of Internal Affairs Yuri Lutsenko and the Minister of Environmental Protection Georgy Filipchuk, appeared on the website of the President of Ukraine today at 9.30 in the morning. Moreover, only the night before the observant mission of the European Parliament consisting of Peter Koks and Alexander Kvasnevsky, as well as the Ukrainian Ombudsman Valery Lutkovskaya turned to the head of state with a request to have pardon Lutsenko due to health problems.

These problems, apparently, will be called the authorities the main formal basis for pardon. Soon after the arrest in December 2010 and prolonged starvation in protest against the detention, doctors found the initial stage of cirrhosis and portal hypertension in Lutsenko. These diseases fall under the list of diagnoses, in the presence of which the convict cannot serve his sentence in imprisonment, but the court refused to release Lutsenko to freedom. In January, he was performed on the intestine.

A year ago, at the beginning of 2012, the former head of the police department was sentenced to four-year imprisonment for abuse of official powers (he allegedly spent too many funds on the celebration of the annual police day), and in August of that year in the second criminal case-illegal surveillance-he was convicted of two years of imprisonment. This period was absorbed by a more severe punishment by the first sentence. One of the leaders of the Ukrainian opposition was supposed to leave the Mensky colony near Chernigov at the end of 2014.

Lutsenko himself has repeatedly stated that his criminal prosecution is the revenge of President Yanukovych. “The fear of the repetition of the Orange Revolution is the cause of the demonstrative reprisal over me and ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko,” the leader of “People’s Self-Defense” said in the trial.

According to the presidential decree, another oppositionist, a former Minister of Environmental Protection, Georgy Filipchuk, convicted of excess of power on April 5, 2012, will be released to freedom. Unlike Lutsenko, Filipchuk himself asked Yanukovych about pardon.

Both ex-minister were members of the Government of Yulia Tymoshenko (now a seven-year sentence in the so-called "gas case"). The processes over the opposition caused the cooling of the relations of Ukraine and the European Union. The liberation from the colony of Yuri Lutsenko and other political prisoners, as previously stated in Brussels, will increase Kyiv’s chances to sign an agreement on the association with the European Union at the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius in November.