Ehud Olmert Will Remain Free Until He Exhausts Appeals, Court Rules
Image by Getty Images
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will remain out of prison until he has exhausted his appeals, the country’s Supreme Court ruled.
The seven other men also appealing their convictions in the Holyland affair will stay out of prison as well, the court ruled on Monday.
Olmert was sentenced in May to six years in prison and a $289,000 fine for accepting bribes in the real estate scam known as the Holyland Affair and ordered to report to prison on Sept. 1. The prison date was suspended pending his appeal. He recently began a retrial in the so-called Talansky Affair in Jerusalem District Court.
It is unusual to postpone prison sentences in Israel. Olmert’s lawyer, however, argued that his appeal likely would be successful.
Olmert is the first Israeli prime minister to be sentenced to prison.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
