Former Israeli premier Ehud Olmert, who is serving a 27-month prison sentence for corruption, was taken to hospital Tuesday with chest and shoulder pains, prison and hospital officials said.
A spokeswoman at Sheba hospital, near Tel Aviv, told AFP he was being given “a complete medical checkup”.
Olmert, who was prime minister between 2006-2009, is Israel’s first former premier to serve jail time.
The 71-year-old has been at the centre of a fierce public row over press freedoms since police last week seized drafts of a book he is working on.
Daily newspaper Yediot Ahronot said security forces on Thursday raided the premises of Olmert’s publisher Yediot Books, a subsidiary of the newspaper.
The paper said police also seized a draft of a book on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by journalist Ben Caspit, a fierce critic of the premier.
And they took a manuscript by former defence minister Moshe Yaalon, who was fired by Netanyahu last year and is now a political rival.
Yediot Ahronot said detectives also raided the home of the editor working on Olmert’s book.
Caspit was one of several commentators to slam the police action, which he called “more befitting of the acts of an ignorant regime in a totalitarian state”.
On Sunday, the justice ministry said there were suspicions some passages in Olmert’s book might contain classified material “liable to cause grave harm to state security”.
It said the searches were carried out under a court order, and other confiscated materials would not be examined.
“Contrary to claims that have been made, we would like to make clear that nobody intended to study material unrelated to Olmert’s book and nobody will examine it or make any use of it,” the ministry said in a statement.
“The remaining materials will be returned to the publisher and no copy will be kept by the police.”
Olmert was convicted of graft and entered prison in February 2016.
He recently went before a parole board to request his sentence be shortened by a third, and a decision is expected on June 29.
Media reports have said the public prosecutor’s office has opposed parole in light of the suspicions against him.
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