Lord John McCluskey, a Scottish lawyer, judge and politician, believes the trial of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on abuse of office charges was not honest and fair, according to Official web site of Yulia Tymoshenko. "I don’t know very much, but from what I saw and heard, I can conclude that this trial would not have been recognized as fair in Britain. And I don’t think a trial like this could be deemed fair by the European Court of Human Rights, appealing to six articles of the European Convention on Human Rights," John McCluskey said in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda.
In his opinion, Yulia Tymoshenko has a chance for a positive ruling by the European Court of Human Rights. "I don’t know all the details, but I would advise them to prepare an application to the European Court of Human Rights because in our view from the outside, she did not have a fair trial according to the European Convention on Human Rights," he said.
The Scottish lawyer also believes it’s disgraceful for a head of state to call a person guilty without a trial. "It is shameful for a president to say such things. If he [Yanukovych] has evidence that she ordered a murder, it should be given to the prosecutor’s office, and only the prosecutor can decide whether this evidence is enough to send the case to court. You can’t as president go on TV and accuse someone of ordering a murder," he said, commenting on Viktor Yanukovych’s statement in an interview with Bloomberg concerning Yulia Tymoshenko’s complicity in a murder.
"If this had happened in Britain, if the prime minister said: ‘John McCluskey tried to order the murder of his wife’, then I would argue in court that I was denied the right to a fair trial because the prime minister’s words influenced public opinion and it was biased in advanced," he added.
