Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard released

The 61-year-old has always been a thorn in the side of U.S. / Israel relations and over the years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has campaigned for his freedom.

“As someone who raised Jonathan’s case for years with successive American presidents, I had long hoped this day would come”, Netanyahu said. “After three long and hard decades Jonathan is at last reunited with his family”, said Netanyahu, who had long pressed for releasing Pollard. “May this Sabbath bring him much joy and peace”, he continued.

US lawmakers representing Mr. Pollard lobbied their Justice Department to allow the spy to renounce his USA citizenship and move to Israel, where his wife resides.

The U.S. and Israel reportedly had serious discussions about Pollard’s release in the spring of 2014.

Among the stipulations the attorneys are appealing: the requirement to wear an ankle bracelet with 24-hour Global Positioning System monitoring, which they say is harmful to Pollard’s health, and government surveillance of his and his employer’s computers. However, Pollard did mention in an interview in 1998 that he regrets having to become a spy and would have rather moved to Israel to serve his country, according to CNN.

Pollard’s involvement with spying began after he joined the US Navy, and eventually received sufficient security clearance to access Top Secret and Sensitive Compartmented Information.

In July, Secretary of State John Kerry denied that a decision by the U.S. Parole Commission to free Pollard was a U.S. gesture to try to dampen Israeli objections to the nuclear agreement struck between Iran and major world powers.

Netanyahu has instructed Israelis to stay low-key about Pollard’s release because of concern that too warm a celebration might damage efforts to persuade the United States government to let him leave for Israel sooner.

The issue of Pollard’s espionage and subsequent U.S. refusal to commute his sentence has been a point of tension between Israel and the United States during the past three decades.

“We know that he is out of jail; we can’t give more details”, said the spokesman, who asked that his name not be published to avoid personal attention.

“A hero’s welcome in Israel will be interpreted in the U.S.as justification for keeping (Pollard) so long in prison”, Gilboa said.

The first time Obama visited Israel as president, in 2013, more than 100,000 Israelis signed a petition asking that Pollard be freed.

Pollard’s lawyers have said that they have secured a job and housing for him in the NY area, without elaborating, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Pollard was given a life sentence in 1987 for providing large amounts of classified U.S. government information to Israel.

But U.S. District Court Judge Aubrey Robinson rejected the plea deal, giving Pollard the maximum sentence, which in a federal cases is a mandatory minimum of 30 years.

But his former prosecutor argued that Pollard should have remained behind bars.

“Pollard’s sentence of life imprisonment in 1985 was then – and remains today – unprecedented, excessive, grossly disproportionate and unfair”. His defense argued for his extradition, but they never succeed.

Pollard said that he acted out of his love for Israel and that the United States was not sharing some crucial intelligence with its ally about countries in the Arab world.