Israeli Spy Pollard Released From US Prison

The Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed Pollard’s release. Pollard is said to want to move to Israel, but will reside in the NY area if the request is not granted.

He became a hero in Israel but U.S. intelligence officials saw his actions as an enormous betrayal of national security.

“The people of Israel welcome the release of Jonathan Pollard”, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a statement celebrating his release.

Jonathan Pollard’s attorneys are appealing several of the terms of his release, saying they are “illegal”. He is not permitted to leave the United States for five years, to give interviews.

Pollard will be required to wear an electronic bracelet so his movements can be monitored at all times.

He was joined by his wife and lawyers at federal court to challenge terms of his release.

By then, many leaders of the American Jewish community were also arguing that Pollard had been incarcerated too long.

According to Pollard’s family, the former spy, who was born in Texas, wishes to settle in Israel with Esther Zeitz, a Canadian Jew involved in campaigning for his release and whom he married in prison. “We heard about Jonathan Pollard being released so we altered our schedule and slowed it down and changed it so we would be here”, Jackson said.

“There is no basis whatsoever to treat Mr. Pollard in that manner, and doing so is vindictive and cruel, as well as unlawful”, lawyers Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman said.

Kenneth Lasson, a law professor at the University of Baltimore who supported Pollard’s bid to have his sentence shortened, said the Global Positioning System monitoring and computer inspections amount to “vindictiveness by a petty-minded government”.

He claimed only to have passed information vital to Israel’s security that had been withheld by the Americans, but security experts feared the information might have ended up in the hands of the Soviet Union, at the time Washington’s arch rival. “It’s an abuse of the discretion that parole authorities have in a case like this”.

The decision to grant him parole came amid a public disagreement between the U.S. and Israel over a nuclear deal with Iran.

But the talks fell apart, and Pollard remained in prison.

Lahav said Pollard entered prison as a healthy young man and is leaving as a 61-year-old sick man. President Clinton rejected Netanyahu’s request.

“What they are afraid of?” he asked.

The Pollard saga has been a long-time strain on relations with the United States and there was relief that it was over. His lawyers said he has secured a job in the finance department of an investment firm. Following his pre-dawn release from the prison in Butner, N.C., he traveled to New York City, where he checked in with his parole officer. He suffers from severe diabetes and chronic leg and ankle swelling. The organization did not specify Pollard’s location. He had been serving a life sentence. As someone who has raised the issue for many years with American presidents, I have dreamt of this day. He later told colleagues he had been “cultivated” by the Mossad to spy on the United States.

A spy drama that lasted three decades, sowed suspicion between two allies, and that sent a Jewish American behind bars for half his life, ended unceremoniously Friday with the opening of a door in the middle of a dark night in North Carolina.

Supporters said it was churlish to deny Pollard the chance to leave the country now that he has completed his sentence. “I would anticipate they’re going to keep a tight reign on him”, he said.