Last update - 00:00 22/06/2007
Justice Ministry officials: Pardon unlikely for ex-MK Blumenthal
By Yuval Yoaz, Haaretz Correspondent
Former member of Knesset Naomi Blumenthal has little chance of being recommended for a pardon, officials in the Justice Ministry said.
However, both the justice minister and the president are entitled to ignore the ministry's professional recommendation and grant the pardon anyway.
Blumenthal was convicted of graft during a 2002 Likud primary campaign and given an eight-month prison sentence.
Acting President Dalia Itzik and Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann have reportedly reached an agreement to shorten this sentence to six months, which would be served in community service rather than jail.
But Blumenthal's request for a pardon - which will be considered either by Itzik or by incoming president Shimon Peres, should the Justice Ministry submit it after he takes office - is still being processed through the pardons department, which answers directly to Friedmann.
Her application is based on the death of her husband, Professor Michael Blumenthal, who succumbed to a serious illness after her trial ended. But according to a ministry official, "in 99 percent of cases, even people with tough personal circumstances - whose spouse dies, or who get cancer, or who have a crippled dad - have their pardon applications denied and go to jail."
Itzik's office Thursday denied the reports that she and Friedmann have agreed to commute Blumenthal's sentence, saying: "The acting president will consider Blumenthal's pardon request only after it arrives, in accordance with the usual procedure." Sources close to Itzik said that she had not discussed the matter with Friedmann, and that such a conversation could in any case take place only after the Justice Ministry's pardons department submits its opinion and after the minister makes his recommendation.
Friedmann's office declined to comment, saying that "when there is something to announce, we'll announce it."
The Movement for Quality Government wrote to Itzik and Friedmann yesterday and urged them to resist efforts to keep Blumenthal out of jail, "because of the gravity of her crimes - election bribery and obstruction of justice - and because of the duty to refrain from discriminating against hundreds of other prisoners comparable to Blumenthal."