Jailed ex-PM Olmert allowed home for Passover

Convicted Hebron shooter Elor Azaria also granted home release from military base for Jewish holiday of freedom

By ToI Staff 11 April 2017, 8:22 am

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Former prime minister Ehud Olmert is seen departing Maasiyahu Prison in Ramle on July 11, 2016, for his first leave from prison since he began his 19-month sentence in February. (Avi Dishi/Flash90)

Some 250 prisoners were granted a temporary furlough to spend Passover with their families, among them former prime minister Ehud Olmert, Israel Radio reported ahead of the holiday.

Olmert, who was prime minister from 2006 to 2009, is currently serving a 26-month jail sentence on various corruption charges.

He began serving his sentence at Ma’asiyahu Prison in Ramle in February 2016 for graft convictions related to his time as a government minister and mayor of Jerusalem. He’ll be eligible for the standard early parole process in the fall of 2017.

Olmert was one of eight former officials and businessmen convicted in March 2014 in the Holyland real estate corruption case, which officials have characterized as among the largest graft cases in Israel’s history.

He was sentenced in 2014 to six years in prison over two separate charges of taking bribes in the early 2000s, when he served as mayor of Jerusalem. That sentence was reduced to 18 months after the Supreme Court overturned one of his convictions on appeal.

In September, Olmert was sentenced to an additional eight months behind bars for the so-called Talansky affair. In that case, a court upheld a 2015 conviction over his accepting envelopes full of cash from American businessman and fundraiser Morris Talansky in exchange for political favors during his decade-long term as mayor from 1993 to 2003.

IDF soldier Elor Azaria, right, convicted on the manslaughter of a wounded Palestinian, is embraced by his mother Oshra at the start of his sentencing hearing in a military court in Tel Aviv, February 21, 2017. (AFP/Pool/Jim Hollander)

Also among the 256 prisoners allowed home for Passover was IDF soldier Elor Azaria, Hebrew media reported. Azaria was convicted in January of manslaughter after shooting an incapacitated Palestinian assailant in the West Bank city of Hebron in March 2016.

Azaria, 21, was sentenced to 18 months in prison in February, but after deciding to appeal the sentence, a military judge delayed the start of his term until after the appeals process is concluded.

He is currently confined to a military base, where he has been for the past 11 months since being released from military house-arrest shortly after the March 24, 2016 incident in which he shot dead Abed al-Fattah al-Sharif, minutes after Sharif and another man had carried out a stabbing attack on troops in Hebron, and as Sharif lay on the ground disarmed and bleeding after having been shot during the attack.