Disgraced former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert on Monday began serving a 19-month jail term for bribery and obstruction of justice in a major corruption case, becoming the first premier in the Jewish state’s history to be imprisoned.
70-year-old Olmert entered Ma’asiyahu Prison in Ramle this morning, nearly two months after the apex court upheld his bribery conviction.
Earlier in the morning, hours ahead of his incarceration, he insisted that while he accepted the sentence, he was innocent of taking bribes.
The case, which relates to the period when Olmert served as the Mayor of Jerusalem between 1992 and 2003, came to public domain while he served as the Prime Minister, forcing him to resign from the post in 2009 and paving the way for the incumbent Benjamin Netanyahu.
Olmert, who was prime minister from 2006 to 2009, was initially sentenced to six years in 2014 in the case, but the Israeli Supreme Court later upheld a lesser charge reducing the sentence to 18 months.
This however was again extended by a month for pressurising a confidant not to testify in multiple legal cases against him. The former Prime Minister is also awaiting a ruling in an appeal in a
separate case in which he was sentenced to eight months in prison for unlawfully accepting money from an American supporter.