Ex-producer Harvey Weinstein hospitalized after “alarming blood tests”, according to his lawyer

The former Hollywood mogul, imprisoned in New York for rape, suffers in particular from leukemia.

Former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, imprisoned in New York for rape, was hospitalized after “alarming blood tests”announced his lawyer and his spokesperson, Monday, December 2. The 72-year-old American prisoner “required immediate medical attention”said his advisor, Imran Ansari, in an email to AFP. He will stay in the hospital “until his condition stabilizes”he added.

In the same email, a spokesperson for Harvey Weinstein recalls that his client “suffers from numerous illnesses, including leukemia” et “lack of medical care”which according to him is similar to a “ill-treatment constituting cruel and unusual punishment”. The ex-producer had already been urgently hospitalized in September for “heart surgery”before being reincarcerated in New York, in Rikers prison. He then appeared in a Manhattan court for procedural hearings, the last time at the end of October on a wheelchair, pale and visibly diminished.

The former boss of Miramax studios must be retried in 2025 in New York, after the annulment by an appeals court of his sentence to 23 years in prison for the rape of actress Jessica Mann, and the sexual assault of a production assistant, Mimi Haleyi. A new trial was scheduled to begin on November 12, but in the meantime he was indicted after a new accusation of sexual assault in Manhattan in 2006.

The next procedural hearing will be held on January 29 to normally set a trial date for the entire proceedings. Even though his New York conviction was overturned, Harvey Weinstein remains incarcerated because he was sentenced in 2023 to 16 years in prison by a Los Angeles court for other cases of rape and sexual assault.