Israel’s top court yesterday slashed former prime minister Ehud Olmert’s prison sentence to 18 months from six years after overturning the main count in his bribery conviction last year.
Olmert, 70, is to begin serving his term on Feb. 15, according to live reports from the Jerusalem courtroom, making him the first former head of government in Israel to go to prison.
The charges relate to his 1992-2003 term as Jerusalem’s mayor and real-estate deals in the city.
Photo: EPA
The conviction ended speculation that Olmert — a centrist credited with working toward a peace settlement with the Palestinians until the graft scandal forced him to step down — might return to political life.
The Kadima party he formerly headed is no longer in parliament.
Olmert, prime minister from 2006 to 2009, has denied any wrongdoing in a major property deal that led to the construction of the hilltop Holyland apartment towers, a hulking stone complex widely seen as one of Jerusalem’s worst eyesores.
“A large weight has been lifted from my heart with the Supreme Court deciding to acquit me of the main charge in the Holyland affair,” Olmert told reporters after the ruling.
“No bribe was ever offered to me and I never accepted one,” said Olmert, who looked visibly relieved. “But I respect the verdict of the Supreme Court justices.”
Tel Aviv District Court found Olmert guilty in March last year of two bribery charges, finding that he accepted 500,000 shekels (US$128,720) from developers of the Holyland project and 60,000 shekels in a separate real-estate deal.
The six-year sentence handed down by the lower court had been put on hold until the culmination of the appeal.
Issuing its ruling, a five-member Supreme Court panel said it had not been proven beyond reasonable doubt that Olmert had solicited the 500,000 shekels from a real-estate developer to help his brother get out of debt. It upheld his conviction on accepting the smaller amount.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the