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Former PM Olmert Requests Presidential Pardon in Criminal Case

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Disgraced former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert submitted a request for a pardon from President Reuven Rivlin on Monday, asking for erasure of the criminal record in his case.

“A request for a pardon on behalf of Ehud Olmert asking for the annulment of the criminal record in his case was submitted today,” the President’s Residence said in a statement. “The application has been forwarded to the relevant bodies and after the required legal opinions are submitted, the President will make his ruling.”

Last July, Olmert was released from prison, after serving 16 months of a 27-month sentence for fraud and bribery.

Olmert, who served as prime minister from 2006 to 2009, was convicted for accepting a NIS 60,000 bribe when he served as Industry, Trade and Labor minister, and for obstructing court proceedings.

Ehud Olmert returned to the public eye last month with the release of his autobiography “In the First Person” (“Beguf Rishon”) where he insisted there was a conspiracy to oust him as prime minister because he wanted to sign a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

On January 30th of this year, TPS reported that the State Prosecutor’s Office had decided not to open a criminal investigation against Olmert over an alleged leak of classified information.

The announcement comes some six months after the prosecution and police launched an investigation to determine whether Olmert had committed a criminal offense while incarcerated at Maasiyahu Prison in Ramle during his 27-month sentence for bribery and corruption.

The investigation centered around the former prime minister’s autobiography, which he worked on while in jail and apparently touches on sensitive security issues.

One of Olmert’s attorneys was apprehended with a chapter of the book dealing with a top secret security-related incident that the censor has banned in the past for publication. Olmert was prime minister when Israel attacked a nuclear facility at Deir ez-Zor in Syria in 2007.

Lt.-Gen. (Res.) Gabi Ashkenazi, the IDF Chief of Staff at the time, said with regard to the bombing of the reactor that as soon as Olmert had charged the IDF with the task of destroying the facility, “it became clear to me that we had to prepare intelligence, operational and technological capabilities to remove the nuclear threat from Israel and the region and at the same time take action to prevent the situation deteriorating into a war – and if Israel was forced into a war then to win it decisively.”

Current Chief of Staff, Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, OC Northern Command at the time of the bombing of the reactor said the message that should be taken from the incident is that “Israel will never accept an existential threat against it. That was the message in 2007 and that is the message to our enemies in both the near and distant future.”

At the time, the prosecution said police would investigate whether Olmert transferred classified information to unauthorized parties. Olmert was warned by the prosecution on several occasions that the leak of classified information could cause serious damage to state security, however his attorneys rejected the charges, saying the book had been submitted in its entirety to the censor.

  (TPS)

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