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Ukraine’s prosecutors probe Yushchenko poisoning case materials

21 September 2010 22:51 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office is checking the materials from the case surrounding the poisoning of ex-president Viktor Yushchenko in 2004, the Unian news agency reported Tuesday, APA reports quoting RIA Novosti.
"The criminal case materials are being checked. The results will be reported," Unian quoted a Prosecutor General’s Office representative as saying.
The case was being probed by an investigative group led by Halyna Klymovych, who resigned from the post in April 2010.
Ukrainian media wrote on Monday that criminal proceedings may be launched against Klymovych over the disappearance of material evidence from the case. A source in the Prosecutor General’s Office said the materials do not contain a sample of Yushchenko’s blood.
Klymovych said the blood samples were destroyed before she was appointed head of the investigative group. She has insisted that her investigative group conducted a thorough probe and proved that Yushchenko had been poisoned.
Yushchenko fell ill shortly after a dinner on September 5, 2004 with the then security service head Ihor Smeshko, and his deputy, Volodymyr Satsiuk, whom he had invited to discuss the 2004 election campaign.
The next day, Ukrainian doctors diagnosed food poisoning, and four days later, as his condition failed to improve, Yushchenko was taken to the Rudolfinerhaus clinic in Vienna, which he left later in the month for the election campaign.
Medical experts involved, including from the United States, Austria and Britain, were divided over the cause of his illness, but in late 2004 the Rudolfinerhaus clinic confirmed that he had been poisoned with dioxin.
A number of conflicting theories arose as to who might have poisoned him - or indeed if he was poisoned at all.
Yushchenko served as Ukrainian president from January 2005 until February 2010. Viktor Yanukovych replaced him on February 25 this year.