Jonathan Pollard Freed After 30 Years

The former US Navy intelligence officer is no longer in custody at a federal prison in Butner, North Carolina, the Bureau of Prisons confirmed on Friday morning.

Jonathan Pollard, with his wife, after being released from prison on Friday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, which has long pushed for Pollard to be freed, welcomed his release.

The family moved so his father, Morris Pollard, could take a job as a virologist at Notre Dame. “It’s an awesome moment”. “The Global Positioning System monitoring condition bears no relationship to Mr. Pollard’s offense or history, to the goals of criminal sentencing, is not necessary to protect the public, and is totally unjustified”, the petition states. He lawyers said they arranged for work for him somewhere in the NY area. “After five years, Pollard must be released from his parole terms, unless the commission has a compelling reason to keep him on probation”.

The official Free Pollard campaign and Pollard’s attorneys have declined to comment on the parole conditions, but they did encourage USA congress members to ask the Justice Department to ease them.

His release caps an extraordinary espionage case that complicated American-Israeli relations for three decades.

“After three long and hard decades, Jonathan has been reunited with his family”, said Netanyahu, noting that he had raised Pollard’s case for years with several USA presidents.

Like other supporters, he believes Pollard was “double-crossed” into thinking he’d be afforded leniency in exchange for a guilty plea.

“The decision I made was based on fear and concern…those were emotions that got the better of me”, he said.

Born in Galveston of Texas in 1954, Pollard.spied for Israel whilie being a Navy intelligence analyst in the US. He had earlier drawn the suspicion of a supervisor for handling large amounts of classified materials unrelated to his official duties.

Pollard pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit espionage.

In an interview in 1998 Pollard said the price he had paid for spying had not been worth it.

Edelstein praised the low-profile release and said that “if we don’t make waves” then “it’s possible that he will be able to fulfill his dream and come here, leaving behind all the suffering he endured”.

Pollard, 61, was given a life sentence in 1987 in a case that has complicated diplomacy between the two countries.

Under the terms of his parole, he will not be permitted to leave the USA for five years without special permission from the president, but he has offered to renounce his citizenship if granted his wish to move to Israel with the wife he married while in prison.

Perception of Pollard, who was granted Israeli citizenship in 1995, has evolved there over the years, with rightwing activists seeking to turn him into an icon.

Pollard said that he acted out of his love for Israel and that the United States was not sharing a few crucial intelligence with its ally about countries in the Arab world. “Obviously the one thing at issue is the requirement that he remains in the United States”, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes was quoted as saying.

“Once again, the president does not have any plans to alter the terms of his parole”.

The US a year ago hinted at freeing Pollard early as an incentive for Israel to continue negotiating with Palestinians. Now that he’s out of prison, it’s more likely that Pollard will retreat into oblivion, a relic of an era with very little connection to the present.