Olmert up for early release amid new classified leak probe
Jailed former PM set to come before parole board, as state seeks to investigate his handling of sensitive info
Jailed former prime minister Ehud Olmert attended his first parole board hearing Sunday, while facing a probe — and potentially a full-blown investigation — over his handling of classified materials while in prison.
Olmert, serving a 27-month sentence for various corruption convictions, was seeking to have a third of his sentence cut off. Meanwhile, the State Prosecutor’s Office has asked police to launch an investigation into whether he committed a criminal offense by divulging sensitive information in the memoirs he is writing.
Entering the parole hearing at Maasiyahu Prison, Olmert’s attorney Eli Zohar told reporters: “I hope we get through this day positively and successfully… We feel great.”
The state requested last week that Olmert’s hearing be postponed a second time to allow police to complete their inquiry, but was denied by a judge. On June 1 the state had won an initial postponement of the hearing, as it sought to submit classified materials to the parole board that would require the committee members to obtain appropriate security clearance.
On Thursday police raided the offices of the Yedioth Books publishing house in the central town of Rishon Lezion in a search for classified material that may have been provided by Olmert. They also raided the home of Yehuda Yaari, who is editing Olmert’s memoirs on behalf of the publisher.
“Olmert has been writing his book while incarcerated,” the state prosecution said in a statement Thursday. “Parts of the book deal with sensitive security issues. Recently, an incident took place in which one of Olmert’s lawyers was caught as he left the prison with a chapter of the book… The chapter includes, among other things, secret operational details that were not approved for publication in the past.”
The incident took place in May. According to a Channel 2 report at the time, the lawyer was carrying two chapters from Olmert’s memoirs that relate to the bombing of a Syrian nuclear reactor in September 2007.
Israel never officially confirmed that it was responsible for the attack on the reactor in the Deir Ezzor region of Syria, and Israeli media was banned from confirming an Israeli connection.
Since, as prime minister, Olmert was privy to the Jewish state’s most closely guarded secrets, prison authorities have required he transfer all written materials from his memoir to censors before handing them over to his publisher.
Following the discovery of the documents, Olmert reportedly lost some prison privileges including an upcoming furlough and access to the public phone.
During his most recent furlough, Olmert met with the chief censor of the IDF. Sources close to the former prime minister said the two chapters were approved by the state censor two months ago, and that there was therefore no basis for a criminal investigation.
Olmert has insisted he was not trying to skirt any laws.
“I have never been told that it is forbidden to transfer written material,” he said, according to Channel 2 news. “The lawyers are involved with my writing, and go over all the material.”
Olmert was one of eight former officials and businessmen convicted in March 2014 in the Holyland real estate corruption case, which has been characterized as among the largest graft cases in Israel’s history.
In September 2016, he 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.
The Prisons Service refitted a wing in the Ma’asiyahu Prison in Ramle to house Olmert, the first former premier to serve jail time, keeping him in a separate complex shared only by carefully screened fellow convicts.
Olmert, who began serving his sentence in February 2016, is seeking early release. The law allows authorities to reduce sentences by a third for good behavior.
