Tymoshenko's daughter suspects poisoning

BRUSSELS, March 6 (UPI) -- Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's daughter said she suspects her mother is being poisoned in a Ukraine prison.

Eugenia Carr also told EUobserver German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in Brussels she would try to help her mother.

Carr said Tymoshenko started having symptoms including dizziness, bruises and neurological pain in her spine one week after she was detained in August and the symptoms have been worsening.

"Most probably, my mother was poisoned, or this [poisoning] keeps going on on a daily basis ... They are trying to destroy her as a politician, to destroy her health and probably to kill her slowly without anybody knowing," she said.

Carr said her mother is unable to walk about 546 yards to the visitors area at the Kachanivska penal colony where she is being held.

Judges, Carr said, have refused an independent toxicology report despite more than 100 requests for one.

Carr said she met Merkel Thursday at a congress of the center-right EPP political group in Brussels Thursday.

"Chancellor Merkel, whom I met personally yesterday, promised not to leave [Tymoshenko] in trouble ... She asked me to give her warmest regards to my mother and to say she is not going to forget her, that she is going to continue to fight for her and to do all she can to stop what is going on in Ukraine," Carr said.

Tymoshenko, who served as prime minister from December 2007 to March 2010, was sentenced to seven years in prison in October for abuse of office in the 2009 signing of Russian gas contracts. She was also fined $200 million.

Her conviction has been condemned as politically motivated by the United States, the European Union and human rights groups.