After 30 years, U.S. to release Israeli spy
Jonathan Pollard, the former U.S. naval intelligence analyst whose conviction of spying for Israel stoked fierce international passions, has been granted parole and will be released from prison in November after nearly 30 years.
The decision to free Pollard from his life sentence, announced Tuesday by his lawyers and then confirmed by the U.S. Justice Department, caps an extraordinary espionage case after decades of legal and diplomatic wrangling. Critics have condemned the American as a traitor who betrayed his country for money and disclosed damaging secrets, while supporters have argued that he was punished excessively given that he spied for a U.S. ally.
Pollard is due to be released on Nov. 21, three decades after he was arrested while trying to gain asylum at the Israeli embassy in Washington.
Though the Jewish-American community has wrestled with how much leniency he should get, Israelis have long campaigned for his freedom. The government there has recognized him as an Israeli agent and granted him citizenship.
“We are looking forward to his release,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement Tuesday.
White House and Israeli officials denied the release was in any way tied to the nuclear deal recently reached with Iran, or that it was intended as a concession to Israel. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who testified Tuesday before Congress on the nuclear deal, told reporters Pollard’s parole was “not at all” connected. Israeli officials have said that while they would welcome the release it would not ease their opposition to the Iran agreement.
The U.S. previously had dangled the prospect of his release, including during Israel-Palestinian talks last year, when the Obama administration considered the possibility of freeing Pollard early as part of a package of incentives to keep Israel at the negotiating table. As it turned out, the peace effort collapsed and nothing came of the proposal.
The Justice Department noted that U.S. sentencing rules in place at the time of Pollard’s prosecution entitled him to parole after 30 years of his life sentence. Department lawyers did not contest his parole bid, which was granted following a hearing this month before the U.S. Parole Commission.
Though parolees are required for five years after their release to get government permission for foreign travel, Pollard’s lawyers say they intend to ask President Barack Obama to grant him clemency as well as authority to leave the United States and move to Israel immediately.
Said Netanyahu, in Israel, “Throughout his time in prison, I consistently raised the issue of his release in my meetings and conversations with the leadership of successive U.S. administrations.”
Pollard, 60, has faced health problems in recent years. He is being held in the federal prison in Butner, N.C., and his lawyers said they have secured housing and a job for him in New York once he is released. They said he was “looking forward to being reunited with his beloved wife, Esther.”