The Ukrainian parliament's vice-speaker has called for an emergency debate on the detention of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on a judge's orders for violating court rules during her trial for abuse of office in Kiev.
Police escorted Tymoshenko out of the courtroom on Friday after the judge accused the 50-year-old opposition leader of disrupting hearings.
Tymoshenko, President Viktor Yanukovych's main rival, says the charges against her are politically motivated.
She is accused of signing a 10-year natural gas import contract with Russia in 2009 that prosecutors claim was ruinous for the Ukrainian economy and that she did not have cabinet approval to sign.
In a statement on Saturday, Verkhovnaya Rada Vice-Speaker Mykola Tomenko said there was a "situation of unlawfulness" in the former Soviet republic and called for an emergency session of parliament to discuss Tymoshenko's detention.
"Today, parliament is the only place where the opposition can at least present an alternative perspective on what is going on in Ukraine and on the unprecedented unlawful and undemocratic actions of the authorities," Tomenko said.
The country's prime minister, Mykola Azarov, who gave testimony in the trial on Friday, said Tymoshenko's detention was "justified."
"I was there yesterday, I saw with my own eyes how the court was mocked," Azarov told reporters on Saturday.
Tymoshenko refused to rise while addressing the court as is required, and repeatedly insulted the judge and witnesses.
Tymoshenko's supporters have set up a camp outside the Pechyorsky district court in Kiev.
Tymoshenko was one of the leaders of the 2004 liberal Orange Revolution that annulled Yanukovych's fraud-tainted victory in a presidential election and brought the pro-western Viktor Yushchenko to power.
She was defeated by Yanukovych in last year's presidential poll.
