Israel Welcomes Jonathan Pollard’s Release
Almost 30 years after his arrest, convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard was released on parole from a us prison early Friday morning.
The White House renewed its longstanding opposition to the request that Pollard be allowed to leave the country.
According to Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Eliot L. Engel, Pollard is willing to renounce his US citizenship to facilitate his being sent to Israel.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that the crime merited a life sentence, given the amount of damage that Mr. Pollard did to the United States government”, said Joseph diGenova, who prosecuted the case as USA attorney in Washington. He lawyers said they arranged for work for him somewhere in the NY area.
Mr. Pollard was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 after he pleaded guilty to violating the country’s Espionage Act by spying for Israel and providing the USA ally with top-secret classified information.
“Over the years, we’ve felt Pollard’s pain and felt responsible and obliged to bring about his release”.
The arrest revealed a divide between the communities of American and Israeli Jews, which are closely bound most of the time by shares history and religion.
The saga involving Pollard for years divided public opinion in the United States and became both an irritant and a periodic bargaining chip between the US and Israel.
Standard rules for federal parolees would also restrict Pollard’s travel within the U.S.
Edelstein said that November 20 was a “happy day filled with sadness”, and added that Pollard should have been freed a while ago. Jonathan Pollard is set to be paroled from the federal prison on Friday, 30 years after he was caught selling A…
He claimed only to have passed information vital to Israel’s security that the Americans had withheld, but security experts feared sensitive information might have reached Soviet hands.
Pollard got $10,000 and an expensive diamond ring for his girlfriend from his Israeli handler when he started passing on documents, and was given a stipend of $2,500 a month. “The State of Israel owes him a moral debt and I intend to ensure it makes good on it”, Bitan said.
Convicted spy Jonathan Pollard and his wife, Esther leave the federal courthouse in NY on Friday. However, his lawyers are now fighting his parole conditions so that he can move to Israel and reunite with his second wife.
In a letter to Pollard, the chairman of the Knesset caucus dedicated to Pollard, MK Nahman Shai wrote, “Jonathan, the Caucus will not cease its activity until we remove the limitations imposed on you upon your release”.
Pollard’s first step as a free man was, in fact, a visit to the his parole office at the New York Southern District court, where he checked in and received his GPS-enabled ankle bracelet which will allow authorities to track his every move. But successive presidents, including Obama, refused to grant him clemency. Now, after serving 30 years-the mandatory minimum-he’s being let go and is supposed to serve five years of parole in the US.
Pollard will still have to check in regularly with a parole officer for a year and can be returned to prison for poor behavior.
There is speculation that the July announcement of Pollard’s release, just days after the West and Iran struck a nuclear deal, was meant as a conciliatory gesture towards Israel, which vehemently opposes the accord. “They own it. President Obama owns his release”.