Thousands of supporters of Arieh Deri, founder of the powerful ultra-Orthodox Jewish party Shas, joined him Sunday on the road to prison where he is to start serving a three-year jail sentence for corruption, seven years after first being charged, reported AFP.
Crowds massed outside his Jerusalem home as a dejected looking Deri left for jail by car, following two failed supreme court appeals against the sentence, said the agency.
"A Jewish soul cannot be imprisoned. So long as the soul continues believing in God and the Torah, it does not matter where the body is," Deri said in weekend broadcasts on Shas radio.
Israel Wire News Agency quoted police as saying that they will be monitioring the situation and that they are "taking necessary measures" in case of any reported violations.
Deri, 41, stepped down as the leader of Shas in June after being found guilty of accepting bribes worth 95,000 dollars, along with fraud and abuse of power while he was a senior official and then minister at the interior ministry from 1985 to 1990, said AFP.
Originally from Morocco, Deri founded Shas in 1984 and has often played kingmaker in Israeli governments, throwing its weight at times behind the right wing Likud, at times behind Labor, according to AFP.
Shas, the third largest party in parliament, dealt a crushing blow to Prime Minister Ehud Barak in July when it quit his Labor-led coalition in protest at his peace policies.
Deri is due to serve his sentence at a jail in Ramle, near Tel Aviv, AFP added - (Several Sources)
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