Ukraine opposition leader Tymoshenko to go free: daughter

[February 22, 2014]  KIEV (Reuters) — Jailed Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko will soon be released in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, where she is being treated in hospital, her daughter signaled on Saturday.

Yevgenia Tymoshenko said she was going to Kharkiv to meet her mother, who was jailed in 2011 for seven years for abuse of office linked to a gas deal and is a bitter rival of President Viktor Yanukovich.

"According to Ukrainian law my mum is already a free person," Yevgenia Tymoshenko told reporters following a vote in parliament to speed up procedures for her release.

A spokeswoman for the former prime minister, 53, said that although the moves in parliament already made her a free woman, Tymoshenko had not yet been released or left the hospital where she is receiving treatment for a back problem.

(Reporting by Sergei Karazy and Pavel Polityuk, writing by Alessandra Prentice, editing by Timothy Heritage)

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