Rivlin Lifts Olmert’s Parole Restrictions

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was granted a waiver on some of his parole restrictions, President Reuven Rivlin’s office announced Tuesday.

Olmert will be allowed to travel abroad and will not be required to present himself at a police station twice a month or attend weekly meetings with a social worker. Some restrictions do remain in effect, but they remain confidential.

Rivlin’s decision came two days after Olmert won early release from prison after serving 16 months of his 27-month sentence for corruption.

The president’s office said in a statement that Rivlin would “restrict Olmert’s punishment to the time he served in prison.”

The 71-year-old Olmert, premier between 2006 and 2009, was convicted of graft and entered prison in February 2016. He had been sentenced to 27 months.

The six-member parole board which granted the early release cited Olmert’s conduct in prison as “impeccable” — with the exception of one incident in which he was disciplined for making an inappropriate remark to a guard.

The manuscript of Olmert’s memoir, written while in prison, was recently confiscated by police on suspicion that it contained leaked classified documents.

However, this was not held against him, as the Prisons Service acknowledged that it was aware of the book project and had not acted to prevent transfers of the manuscript to Olmert’s publishers.

“The prison authorities could have stopped the movement of the materials from the prison if they wanted,” the decision said, adding that Olmert should not be held solely responsible for a failure of enforcement.

In March, President Reuven Rivlin denied Olmert’s request for clemency, but said if Olmert was released on parole, he would “consider favorably” a request to lift the restrictive conditions.

This article appeared in print in the July 5th, 2017 edition of Hamodia.