The Ukrainian parliament working group on drawing up a bill on the treatment of convicts abroad failed to reach a consensus on the issue during a meeting on Tuesday, and the opposition factions intend to register their own bill in parliament.
“We will register and submit tomorrow [for consideration by the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament] this bill,” the chairman of the parliamentary committee for legislative support of the law enforcement services, Andriy Kozhemiakin [a member of the Batkivschyna faction], said at a meeting of the working group in Kyiv on Tuesday.
As reported, the opposition faction members of the working group proposed that the group consider a bill that envisages the release of convicts from serving their sentence, so they can obtain treatment abroad.
The opposition also suggested that a convict’s release should be allowed if the convict fell ill while serving their sentence, and has been hospitalized for more than one year outside a penitentiary, with the treatment failing to result in the convict’s recovery.
Under the opposition’s bill, a convict’s treatment abroad should be approved in written form with the foreign medical institution that will receive the convict for treatment.
Expenses on a convict’s treatment abroad should be covered by the convict or his or her relatives, reads the bill.
A court will decide on release of a convict for treatment abroad.
On November 13, at 1000, the Verkhovna Rada is expected to hold an unscheduled sitting to consider European integration bills, including bills aimed at the settlement of the issue of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
