After spending 30 years in prison for spying on the USA for Israel, Jonathan Pollard was released Friday.
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Pollard was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 after pleading guilty the year before to working for the Israeli government and delivering large amounts of classified information to them.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons agreed to free Pollard in July this year after a parole commission determined that Pollard should be released early from his sentence based on his good behavior and that he would be unlikely to commit new crimes after release.
Israeli officials have reportedly been instructed to keep a low profile with regards to the release, as Pollard’s case has been a source of tension between Israel and the United States, its closest ally.
But a US official said Friday that Pollard would have to stay in the United States.
Pollard’s lawyers are now asking Obama to allow Pollard to move to Israel, which gave him citizenship in 1995 and where his wife lives.
U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said Obama “has no plans to alter the forms of his parole” to allow him to leave the United States.
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.
Pollard must wear a Global Positioning System ankle monitor, any company that employs him must open their computers to constant government surveillance, he is forbidden to speak to the media, and immigrating to Israel is out of the question.
“The people of Israel welcome the release of Jonathan Pollard”, he said.
“To the extent Mr. Pollard even recalls any classified information, it would date back 30 years or more, and would have no value to anyone today”, he said. “It may help the strained US-Israeli relations after the Iran deal, but I think this was not the decisive cause for the release”. They said monitoring and tracking conditions imposed on Pollard were most commonly imposed on pedophiles, stalkers and similarly unsafe felons who must be closely supervised at all times for the protection of their victims.
Seymour Reich, a former president of B’nai Brith worldwide who visited Pollard twice in prison, said that while he believed Pollard broke the law and deserved to be punished, his sentence was overly harsh.
But his release is very big news in Israel, where his face appears on bumper stickers, posters and billboards, and has done for years.
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.
Pollard, a former civilian intelligence analyst for the Navy, was arrested in 1985. “May this Sabbath bring him much joy and peace”, he continued.
Jonathan Pollard was released from prison on Friday morning, but the Jonathan Pollard saga is far from over. USA officials condemned him as a traitor.
As a Jewish-American teen moving to South Bend, Indiana, in the 1960s, Jonathan Pollard immediately struggled to fit in.
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Despite parole requirements that he not leave the US without government permission for the next five years, Pollard has expressed a desire to renounce his American citizenship and move to Israel, where he is seen by a few as a national hero.
