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Harvey Weinstein hospitalized after ‘alarming blood test’, lawyer says

(AP) – Harvey Weinstein was hospitalized Monday following an “alarming blood test,” his lawyer said, less than a week after the disgraced movie mogul filed a lawsuit alleging substandard medical care at the city’s notorious prison complex. New York.

Weinstein, 72, was sent to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan for “emergency treatment due to an alarming blood test result that requires immediate medical attention,” his lawyer, Imran Ansari, said in a statement.

“He is expected to remain there until his condition stabilizes,” the statement continued. “His deprivation of care is not only medical negligence, but a violation of his constitutional rights.”

A spokesperson for the New York Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to an email. The agency’s inmate database confirmed that Weinstein had been transferred from Rikers Island to the prison wing of Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan.

Weinstein has been in city custody since earlier this year after the New York Court of Appeals overturned his 2020 rape conviction in the state. The case will be retried in 2025. Weinstein has denied any wrongdoing.

In a legal filing last week, Weinstein’s lawyers accused the city of providing him with substandard medical care for a litany of medical afflictions, including chronic myeloid leukemia and diabetes.

“The last time I visited him, I found him with blood spatters on his inmate uniform, possibly from intravenous drips, clothes that had not been washed in weeks and he had not even been provided with clean underwear, hardly hygienic conditions for someone.” with serious medical conditions,” Ansari said in a statement in which he compared Rikers Island to a “gulag.”

The troubled prison complex, located on an island in New York’s East River, has faced increasing scrutiny over its mistreatment of detainees and dangerous conditions. Last week, a federal judge cleared the way for a possible federal takeover of the prison system, finding that the city had placed its incarcerated population in “unconstitutional danger.”

Juda Engelmayer, Weinstein’s publicist, shared the allegation in a statement on Monday.

“Mr. Weinstein, who suffers from several illnesses, including leukemia, has been deprived of the medical care that someone in his medical condition deserves, incarcerated or not,” he said. “In many ways, this mistreatment constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”

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