Pollard is also alleged to have passed classified information to South Africa, and to have given his then wife Anne documents on China for use in her personal business. His lawyers said he has secured a job in the finance department of an investment firm.
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Welcoming his release, Netanyahu, one of the most prominent advocates for a pardon for Pollard over the years, said in a statement: “The people in Israel welcome the release of Jonathan Pollard”.
The 61-year-old former Navy intelligence analyst was set free in the middle of the night from a medium-security federal prison in Butner, North Carolina, after being paroled from a life sentence that had turned him into a continual source of tension between the US and Israel. Now that he’s out, the Justice Department has continued to take a somewhat hardline stance by requiring that he stay in the USA (he is seeking to renounce his American citizenship as part of a move to Israel).
Critics call him a traitor who sold intelligence for money.
Mr. Pollard’s lawyers have sought permission for the former naval officer to travel immediately to Israel. “Jonathan, to the detriment of his health, has served the longest sentence of any individual convicted of a similar offense in the United States”. He is also not permitted to leave the country for five years, which Haaretz reports could be reduced based on a review hearing in two years, though also possibly extended.
“It is my belief, and the intelligence community was of the almost certain belief, that assets [agents working for the US overseas] were compromised”, said Joseph diGenova, who prosecuted Pollard.
He’s expected to settle in the NY area while he spends at least the next five years on parole.
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. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987 by a US court. “After three long and hard decades, Jonathan is finally reunited with his family”.
Pollard’s lawyers have shown similar discretion in recent days, refusing to give details of the prisoner’s plans once he is freed. But USA officials have said the decision to let Pollard out on parole had nothing to do with that deal and was not meant as a concession for Israel.
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.
Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard leaves federal court holding hands with an unidentified woman, Friday, November 20, 2015 in NY.
Pollard’s lawyers appealed the conditions to the commission’s appeals board, which removed just one – the need for the Commission’s approval to access the Internet. 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.
Nachman Shai, a lawmaker from the center-left Zionist Union who heads a Parliament caucus that pushed for Mr. Pollard’s release, wrote in a letter to Mr. Pollard that the group would “not cease its task until thy children remove the limitations imposed upon you upon your release”. “May this Sabbath bring Jonathan Pollard much joy and peace that will continue in the years and decades ahead”.
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Israel initially claimed Pollard was part of a rogue operation, before granting him citizenship in the 1990s and acknowledging he was an agent.
