KIEV, May 23 – A Kiev court Monday refused to release opposition leader Yuriy Lutsenko, ordering the former interior minister’s five-month arrest to continue for the duration of his trial on charges of allegedly misspending $5,000 while in office.

Lutsenko’s defense team, along with a group of lawmakers, asked the Pecherskiy district court to allow the former minister stay at home while defending himself at the trial.

Lutsenko interpreted the refusal as a sign of politically motivated pressure from his opponent, President Viktor Yanukovych.

The Pecherskiy court has always been “biased and controlled by the head of state,” Lutsenko said in a statement. “My own detention is proof there is no justice in Ukraine.”

Lutsenko is accused of misspending 40,000 hryvnias, or $5,000, to hire and to promote his personal driver at the interior ministry while in office. A group of lawmakers said they would return the money to help Lutsenko’s release.

Prosecutors also alleged Lutsenko illegally ordered in 2009 to continue surveillance on an undisclosed person suspected of involvement in poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko, a former president, in 2004.

Lutsenko, then the interior minister in 2005, was behind the attack against Boris Kolesnikov, then opposition leader and now a deputy prime minister, one of the most powerful figures in the government.

Kolesnikov spent two months in jail awaiting a trial until a court said there was no enough evidence to continue the arrest. Some said Lutsenko’s arrest and trial could a revenge orchestrated by Kolesnikov.

Kolesnikov on Monday said Lutsenko must focus on defense, not on political statements.

“I am confident that if defense lawyers deeply look at the violations that he is being accused of, he may achieve a certain positive result for himself,” Kolesnikov said at a press conference.

Lutsenko denied the allegations and said he would prove his innocence in court, but added he hadn’t had any trust in the court system. He asked for the trial by a jury, which had never been earlier used in Ukraine despite the constitution allowing the defendants to seek the jury trial.

The prosecutors attacked Lutsenko’s request for the jury trial by arguing there is no separate law that would regulate such a trial.

Lutsenko on Monday ended his one-month hunger strike, saying that he will need strength to defend himself at the trial.

Lutsenko, who was arrested on December 26, 2010, had been drinking only water since beginning his protest on April 22, and had reportedly lost more than 20 kilograms, while suffering from low blood pressure and kidney problems, his lawyers said.

“I began the hunger strike to show that in this country there is no justice and ... now I need my strength,” Lutsenko said.

Yulia Tymoshenko, the leader of Ukraine's opposition, told reporters at the entrance to the courtroom that the charges against Lutsenko constituted repression of the government's critics.

“People like Yury Lutsenko are heroes. They will go down in history as the ones who did not break,” Tymoshenko said. (tl/ez)