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Image posted, Reuters
The United States Department of Justice said Jonathan Pollard, an American Jew who was convicted of spying for Israel 35 years ago, ended his parole restrictions, allowing him to travel to Israel.
The US State Department added that “the parole committee decided that there is no evidence that he intends to violate the law.”
Jonathan Pollard was arrested by US authorities in Washington in 1985 and sentenced to life in prison, but was granted parole five years ago.
The American Jew was subject to strict movement restrictions throughout that period, including limiting his stay at home at night and wearing an electronic bracelet to track his whereabouts.
And Pollard’s defense team previously described these restrictions as representing “insurmountable obstacles that prevent you from doing any job for a living.”
In recent years, Israel has continued to pressure Washington to release the American spy, making this issue one of the most important issues discussed during that period in the framework of bilateral relations between the two countries.
“We are grateful and pleased that our client has been released from all the restrictions that he was subjected to and has become a free man on all levels. We also look forward to seeing him in Israel,” said Elliot Lawer and Jack Simmelman, the two lawyers for the former US officer, in a statement they issued on the lifting of restrictions on their client.
The statement added: “Pollard is happy that he will finally be able to help his beloved Esther, who is waging a violent war against cancer.”
He continued: “Pollard would like everyone to know that she (Esther) was his wife. And she was, more than anyone else, the reason he held on to life all these years in prison.”
Pollard also thanked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer for their efforts on his behalf.
Pollard spent nearly 30 years in prison for leaking classified US documents and has been on parole since his release from prison in 2015, despite Israeli pressure to release him.
Pollard, the now 66-year-old former US Navy intelligence officer, had demanded that he travel to Israel to reside with his second wife, coinciding with demands by a group of his supporters in Israel to release him, claiming that the verdict against him was unfair.
The American Jew worked as a civil affairs analyst for the United States Navy in the mid-1980s, when he agreed with an Israeli army colonel in New York to send American military secrets to Tel Aviv in exchange for large sums of money. money.
Over the course of those years, Pollard leaked thousands of highly important American documents to Israel, which for a time disrupted relations between the two allies.
It was information that Pollard provided to Israel that relied on Tel Aviv in planning the raid on the Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunis in 1985, which killed 60 people, according to the CIA in secret documents released in 2012.
A US court handed down life imprisonment for the spy working for Israel in 1985, despite an agreement the court concluded with the defendant’s defense that included his confession to the charges against him amid the expectations of his lawyers to that confession could lead to a lenient sentence.
