The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) has issued a report expressing concern over the health care being provided to former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, and former acting Defense Minister Valeriy Ivashchenko and urging the Ukrainian authorities to take all the necessary measures to ensure that all prisoners who are in need of specialist treatment/examinations are transferred to an outside hospital without undue delay, according to the Official web site of Yulia Tymoshenko.

"The CPT must express its concern that in respect of each of the three above-mentioned persons, considerable delays occurred – for various reasons – in arranging specialized medical examinations outside the SIZO. Problems of this kind have repeatedly been observed by the CPT during all previous visits to the Kyiv SIZO as well as to other penitentiary establishments in Ukraine," says the report.

The committee also requested that the Ukrainian authorities provide an update on all the medical interventions which have been performed in respect of Valeriy Ivashenko, Yuriy Lutsenko and Yulia Tymoshenko and give them a copy of the reports drawn up by the members of the international medical commission who examined Yulia Tymoshenko in February 2012.

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The CPT also said they saw hardly any progress in the conditions of detention and safeguards against police ill-treatment. The delegation was inundated with allegations from detained persons that they had been subjected to physical or psychological ill-treatment and/or excessive use of force by police officers. The complaints mainly concerned punches, kicks, or inappropriate use of batons, at the time of apprehension or during subsequent questioning by operational officers and/or investigators. In several cases, the ill-treatment was of such a severity that it can be considered to amount to torture

The report was based on an unplanned visit to Ukraine carried out by CPT from November 29 to December 6, 2011.

The committee, headed by Latif Huseynov, was the first European group allowed to visit Yulia Tymoshenko in the Kyiv SIZO.