KIEV, June 13 – President Viktor Yanukovych stirred up a storm Wednesday after linking his jailed rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, to a contract murder 16 years ago and indicating he was unmoved by a boycott of Euro 2012 soccer matches by Western governments.

Tymoshenko, who is serving a seven-year sentence for alleged abuse-of-office when prime minister, has dismissed any link with the killing of Yevhen Shcherban as "absurd,” and supporters on Wednesday accused the president of acting like a dictator.

The prosecution and conviction of Tymoshenko has led to a boycott of Euro 2012 matches in Ukraine by some European politicians, who say her trial was politically motivated.

Ukraine is jointly hosting the European soccer championship with Poland throughout June and will stage the final in the capital Kiev on July 1.

Yanukovych's tough words linking Tymoshenko to the 1996 killing of Shcherban, a powerful businessman in eastern Ukraine, suggested he was ready to ride out the diplomatic protests and would not bow to pressure to release her even while the country was acting host to Europe's biggest soccer feast.

Yanukovych, in an interview with reporters this week, said: "Those violations and crimes that were carried out by participants of various criminal cases, they were carried out with the participation of Tymoshenko ... The current authorities didn't invent it. It all happened," Reuters reported.

Asked if this included Shcherban's murder, he replied:
"Including that. There were motives."

In a separate interview with Interfax news agency on Wednesday, Yanukovych said: "If the court proves Tymoshenko was involved in the murder of Shcherban, which the press is writing a lot about now, the case could take a new twist. But, I repeat, this (decision) is the prerogative of the court and nobody else's."

"Linking me to the Shcherban case is absurd," Tymoshenko said in a statement in April. "I believe that people well understand how poorly this case holds together, who benefits from it and how absurd it is," she said.
Her party, Batkivshchyna, on Wednesday accused Yanukovych of acting with the impunity of a dictator.

"These words ... show the total and conclusive collapse of Ukrainian justice and of the illusory independence of Ukraine's prosecutor's office and its courts," the party said in a statement.

"This is a new step in the evolution of a dictator. Yanukovych has assumed the functions of the investigation and the courts. The next step will be for Yanukovych to play a direct role in interrogating Yulia Tymoshenko and torturing her," it said.

An appeal by Tymoshenko against her conviction for abuse-of-office is due to be heard on June 26 in Kiev. The day before, a court in Kharkiv, where she is serving her sentence, is due to resume hearing another charge against her of tax evasion and embezzlement.

Last month, general prosecutor Viktor Pshonka said Tymoshenko, 51, was being treated as a material witness in the Shcherban case and investigators were trawling through evidence in the case, including new testimony from the dead man's son.

Ruslan Shcherban was 19 at the time and survived the attack, but he has said recently he has evidence implicating Tymoshenko. (rt/ez)