Jonathan Pollard

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Jonathan Pollard (1980s)

Jonathan Jay Pollard ( Hebrew יונתן פולארד* August 7, 1954 in Galveston , Texas ) is an Israeli national who was sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States in 1987 for espionage for the Israeli secret service Lakam and was imprisoned until 2015.

Espionage affair

Pollard worked as an intelligence officer for the US Navy from September 1979 . His superiors began to distrust him because secret documents were repeatedly found in his office that were unrelated to his job profile. The FBI was called in and charged with an investigation . In November 1985, Pollard was questioned by the FBI. A few days later, on November 21, 1985, he applied for asylum for himself and his wife at the Israeli embassy. The embassy refused to do so, however, and Pollard and his wife were arrested by FBI officers.

Pollard pleaded guilty to the court, which prevented the details of his case from being heard under Anglo-Saxon law. Pollard was found guilty of espionage on June 4, 1986 and sentenced to life imprisonment on March 4, 1987 . His wife, Anne Henderson-Pollard, was sentenced to five years in prison and released in 1989.

Dismissal controversy

The affair and his resulting life imprisonment, of which he was serving in Butner Federal Prison for the last few years , put a heavy strain on relations between the United States and Israel.

Proponents of a release

Already Yitzhak Rabin had called for a release of Pollard. In February 1996, Pollard was granted Israeli citizenship . The Israeli government repeatedly asked for his release. The then Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu , admitted in 1998 that Pollard had acted as a spy for Israel. On January 9, 2001, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with the detainee and his wife Esther.

On October 21, 2006, Pollard was granted honorary citizenship by the Israeli settlement of Bet El . The Jerusalem City Council named a square after Jonathan Pollard.

In 2011, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote a letter asking US President Barack Obama to pardon Pollard on humanitarian grounds. Alan Dershowitz , who was a defense attorney, has spoken out in favor of Pollard's release.

Bill Clinton recalled in his biography that Sandy Berger , George Tenet and Madeleine Albright were opposed to Pollard's release when he discussed this issue with them. He agreed with their opinion.

In 2005, President George W. Bush rejected a renewed request from the Israelis. When he was on a state visit to Israel in January 2008, the subject was brought to him again.

The New York Times reported on September 21, 2010 that the Netanyahu government had unofficially offered not to build new settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories for three months if Pollard was released.

Henry Kissinger urged Pollard to be released in a letter to Barack Obama.

Opponents of a release

When the release of Pollard was discussed in 1998, Donald Rumsfeld and former Defense Ministers Melvin R. Laird , Frank Carlucci , Richard B. Cheney , Caspar W. Weinberger , James R. Schlesinger and Elliot L. Richardson opposed Pollard's release. Numerous congressmen joined them.

Former heads of naval intelligence, Admirals William Studeman , Sumner Shapiro , John L. Butts, and Thomas Brooks, countered the release proponents by saying they were opponents of the myth created by a clever publicity campaign. Pollard was "turned into an Israeli patriot by a greedy, arrogant impostor of the American nation". He would have provided information not only to Israel but to three other nations as well.

Ron Olive, a former Marine Military Police officer, claimed in his 2006 book Capturing Jonathan Pollard - How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice that Pollard had also sold secrets to Pakistan, although there was none in the public trial documents Notice there.

The editor of the New Republic Martin Peretz referred to Pollard not as a Jewish martyr, but as a paid and convicted agent who spied in his own country for Israel and Pakistan, and attributed Pollard's supporters to the ultra-nationalists and religious right.

Discharge

Pollard was released conditionally on November 20, 2015. He is initially not allowed to leave the USA for five years. He is not allowed to give interviews, has to report to his probation officer regularly and is not allowed to use the internet.

family

Jonathan Pollard is a son of the biologist Morris Pollard (1916–2011). He was married to Anne Henderson-Pollard, who divorced him while he was in prison. He is married to Esther Zeitz for the second time. The marriage was concluded while he was in prison.

Web links

Commons : Jonathan Pollard  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Case of Jonathan Pollard , The MIT Press
  2. ↑ Document prepared in the Knesset surveying the efforts to release Pollard ( Memento of October 7, 2003 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Pollard in US detention for 16 years: Spy feels abandoned by Israel In: Israelnetz.de , November 23, 2001, accessed on July 27, 2018.
  4. ↑ Surprise visit: Netanyahu meets Pollard in jail In: Israelnetz.de , January 9, 2002, accessed on August 13, 2018.
  5. ↑ Messaging Bush, Jerusalem renames city square for Pollard , Stan Goodenough, Jerusalem Newswire, January 8, 2008
  6. ↑ Israel wants spy Pollard back in: 20 minutes from January 4, 2011
  7. ^ Alan M. Dershowitz: Chuzpe , Europäische Verlagsanstalt 1999, ISBN 3-434-50439-7 , English Chutzpah , 1985, Touchstone Books 1991, ISBN 0-671-76089-0 , page 291
  8. ↑ Bill Clinton: My Life . 2004 ISBN 3-430-11857-3 , published by Econ-Verlag, Berlin, page 468
  9. ↑ Jonathan Finer: Bush Trip Revives Israeli Push for Pardon of Spy , Washington Post. January 15, 2008. Retrieved September 6, 2008. 
  10. ^ Isabel Kershner: Israelis Float Settlement Deal Involving Spy , The New York Times . September 21, 2010. 
  11. ^ Kissinger asks Obama to release spy for Israel . In: The Washington Post , Washington Post, March 7, 2011. 
  12. ↑ Richard A. Best, Jr., Clyde R. Mark (Jan. 31, 2001). Jonathan Pollard: Background and Considerations for Presidential Clemency (PDF; 45 kB). Congressional Research Service Report for Congress. The Library of Congress. Retrieved March 7, 2007
  13. ↑ Editorial, Washington Post, December 12, 1998
  14. ^ Sumner Shapiro, Long-Serving Director of Naval Intelligence , Washington Post, Nov. 16, 2006.
  15. ↑ Ronald J. Olive (2006). Capturing Jonathan Pollard: How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice . Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, ISBN 978-1-59114-652-0 , p. 248.
  16. ^ Eliot Lauer, Jacques Semmelmann: Don't be fooled by Ronald Olive . The Jerusalem Post. November 28, 2006. Retrieved December 3, 2012.
  17. ↑ Martin Peretz: Mr. President: Do Not Free Jonathan Pollard , The New Republic, December 25, 2010.
  18. ↑ Israeli spy released after 30 years in US imprisonment ( November 20, 2015 memento in the Internet Archive ) AFP, November 20, 2015. Retrieved November 20, 2015.
  19. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from December 28, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Pollard, Jonathan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pollard, Jonathan Jay (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-Israeli intelligence officer and spy
DATE OF BIRTH 7th August 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Galveston , Texas