Tymoshenko turns up heat as trial begins

Ukraine's former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko went on trial yesterday on charges of abuse of office, insisting during a chaotic hearing in a small and stiflingly hot courtroom that the case is a plot by the nation's president to keep her out of politics.

Ms Tymoshenko, clad in a beige suit and wearing her hair in her signature blond braid, said President Viktor Yanukovych seeks to bar her from upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections as a convicted criminal.

However, the country's leading opposition leader, 50, said she would not be quiet: "My voice will be even louder from prison, because the whole world will hear me."

Confusion reigned in the poorly air-conditioned courtroom. Ms Tymoshenko's supporters continuously disrupted proceedings, ignoring the judge's demand to respect the court. They shouted "Shame, shame!" through a loudspeaker, and insulted the court and authorities, calling one of the prosecutors a witch.

More than 100 journalists, supporters and opponents packed the hall in Kiev's Pechersk district court. Most attendees had to climb on top of narrow wooden benches in order to see and hear the proceedings and took turns standing near a window for fresh air.

Sweat dripped from Judge Rodion Kireyev's face and his hair was wet. Ms Tymoshenko's lawyer, Serhyi Vlasov, pleaded with the court for a short break to change. A young woman in the courtroom fainted and was escorted out.

The European Union has condemned the cases against Ms Tymoshenko and a number of her top allies as selective prosecution of political opponents.

Jose Manuel Pinton Teixeira, the EU's ambassador to Ukraine, who attended the trial, said the conditions in the courtroom were horrendous.

"I cannot give a political assessment of this case, but the conditions of this trial are inhumane," Mr Teixeira told reporters as he left.

Ms Tymoshenko has been charged with abuse of office for signing a deal with Moscow in 2009 to buy Russian natural gas at prices investigators said were too high and without authorisation to sign the deal by the members of her cabinet. She denies the charges, saying that, as premier, she did not need such permission.

Ms Tymoshenko, who carried an Orthodox Christian icon and a prayer book into the courtroom, refused to stand up when addressing the judge, as required, saying the court was not worthy of her respect.

"I declare you a puppet of the presidential office," she told the judge. "You don't have the right to consider this case. You are fully integrated into a system of political repression directed by authorities."

Ms Tymoshenko was the central figure in the 2004 mass protests dubbed the Orange Revolution that threw out Mr Yanukovych's fraud-tainted presidential election victory and brought a pro-Western government to power. She became prime minister but Ukrainians grew frustrated over economic hardships, slow reforms and endless bickering in the Orange camp and she lost to Kremlin-friendly Mr Yanukovych in the 2010 presidential election.

Many of her allies also have faced official charges recently, which she describes as part of the government's efforts to weaken the opposition.

Her former economics minister, who faced corruption allegations over the reconstruction of Kiev's airport, was granted political asylum in the Czech Republic in January. The former interior minister has been in jail for six months on charges that he defrauded the government.

Few think that Ms Tymoshenko could be sentenced to prison, but observers point that a suspended sentence will also keep her out of the next year's parliamentary elections and the 2015 presidential vote.