The 7-month prison term of Ariel Sharon's son Omri, who has served 2.5 months in jail, will not be commuted for now. So announced Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann's office this morning.
Omri Sharon was convicted of violating political campaign laws when he helped his father in the 1999 Likud Party primaries. His crimes included receiving unlawful campaign donations and filing false affidavits, and he could have faced up to five years in prison. Ariel Sharon, who denied any knowledge of how his campaign was financed and said it was run exclusively by his son, won the title of Likud party leader and its candidate for prime minister in that election.
Many viewed Omri Sharon favorably for his apparent willingness to be his father's "fall guy."
Ariel Sharon suffered a massive brain hemorrhage in January 2006, lapsing into a coma that is now nearly 2.5 years old. The beginning of Omri's sentence was postponed in the past because of his father's illness.
President Shimon Peres and Minister Friedmann have received several pleas for clemency for Omri Sharon. The pleas stated that the campaign funding conviction was the first of its kind in Israel, that Sharon had confessed his guilt and assumed responsibility for his actions, that he had resigned from the Knesset and left politics, and that he was dedicated to his father and visited him in the hospital daily.
Minister Friedmann announced that he sees no room for clemency or leniency at this point in time. He said that the claims presented to him are essentially the same as those considered by the court that meted out the sentence, and that nothing had changed since then. "The time that has passed since the sentencing is too short to justify a reconsideration of the sentence," Friedmann feels, especially since only 4.5 months of the sentence remain.
In his one three-year term in the Knesset, which began in 1993, Omri Sharon was best known for his behind-the-scenes work in pushing and promoting the Disengagement, in which 25 Jewish towns in Gaza and Shomron were destroyed and 9,000 Jews were made homeless. He was also heavily involved in doling out official appointments to governmental and official bodies.
The Land of Israel Legal Forum announced in the past, "If President Peres were to pardon Omri Sharon, who helped elect him to the presidency, the stink will be smelled all the way from the President's House to Maasiyahu Prison... The 30 MKs who asked that he be pardoned thus trampled the honor of the Knesset and the concept of equality before the law."