KIEV, June 24 – Jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko on Monday will skip a court hearing due to look into new tax dodging charges that the authorities are pressing against the former prime minister.

Tymoshenko, who is going through back pain treatment, officially requested permission to skip the hearing, citing a conclusion by a prominent German doctor a day earlier, the state prison authority reported in a statement on Sunday.

The statement addressed growing concerns that Tymoshenko may be taken to the court by force amid signs the authorities had been seeking to inflict more political damage on the opposition leader.

“After Yulia Volodymyrivsna has been once beaten in the jail, after a case [against Tymoshenko] was heard in a jail cell, unfortunately, I am not ruling out anything in the Tymoshenko case,” Serhiy Vlasenko, her lawyer, said.

But the prison authorities responded with the statement that Tymoshneko may skip the court hearing on Monday, and that she will not be taken there by force.

Tymoshenko, who was in October jailed to seven years in jail for abuse of office while negotiating a 10-year natural gas agreement with Russia in January 2009, is facing new charges, now of the alleged tax evasion 16 years ago when she was in charge of a private gas trader.

Tymoshenko is currently undergoing procedures to treat her spine hernia condition in a state hospital in Kharkiv, and is being treated by a team of German doctors.

Prof. Dr. Karl Max Einhaupl of Charite, a Berlin-based medical center, who is in charge of the treatment, examined Tymoshenko on Saturday to see whether she is capable of joining the trial.

“Yesterday, Dr. Karl Max Einhaupl gave an interview to German media and said that doctors believe it is impossible for Tymoshenko to stand the trial due to medical reasons,” Vlasenko said.

On Tuesday, another Ukrainian court will hear an appeal from Tymoshenko of her seven-year sentence given to her in October 2011.

Officials also said the new charges may quickly follow, including the alleged complicity in the murder of Yevhen Shcherban, a lawmaker and businessman who was gunned down at an airport in the east Ukrainian city of Donetsk in 1996.

Renat Kuzmin, the first deputy prosecutor general, said recently that Tymoshenko, along with former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, organized and financed the killing.

Kuzmin told The Wall Street Journal recently that Tymoshenko, who in the mid-1990s headed a gas-trading company, and Mr. Lazarenko "were engaged in a criminal business in Ukraine and eliminated competitors by killing them."

He also linked them to the 1996 murders of businessmen Oleksandr Momot and Oleksandr Shvedchenko, who Kuzmin said were allies of Shcherban in resisting attempts by Tymoshenko to take control of the gas market.

"They were all killed by a gang … working in the service of Lazarenko and Tymoshenko," Mr. Kuzmin said, speaking softly and deliberately. "Tymoshenko had direct contact with these killers. Money for the murder of Shcherban was transferred from the accounts of Lazarenko and Tymoshenko."

Tymoshenko and Lazarenko, who is nearing the end of a nine-year sentence for money laundering in a California jail, deny involvement in the murders.

"This is just propaganda," Vlasenko, said. "It's the same as if he accused her of killing President Kennedy. They have all the power and could accuse her of killing everyone in this country for the last 20 years." (tl/ex)