|
|
| |
|
|||||||||||
  
| |||||||||||
| |||||||||||
 |
A Pollard chronologyBy ALLISON KAPLAN SOMMER(October 25) - Jonathan Pollard, a former civilian intelligence analyst for the US Navy, was arrested in 1985 and pleaded guilty in 1987 to providing Israel with secret US intelligence on the military capabilities of Arab countries still at war with Israel, including Iraqi chemical and biological warfare capacities. He received a life sentence.
But beginning in 1989, grassroots support for Pollard in the US and Israel began to force US Jewry and Israeli officials into action on his behalf, beginning with action to free his ailing first wife Anne, who was arrested with him and sentenced to five years in prison. She was released from prison in 1990 and moved to Israel; she and Pollard were divorced shortly afterward. Also in 1989, MKs Geula Cohen of Tehiya and Edna Solodar of Labor were the first MKs to meet with Pollard and lobby on his behalf. In 1991 former Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations chairman Seymour Reich became the first major American Jewish leader to visit Pollard. All legal attempts to improve Pollard's fate proved fruitless. In March of 1992, a US Federal Appeals Court panel rejected Pollard's appeal of his life sentence; in October the ruling was upheld by the Supreme Court. Pollard supporters then turned to the political arena. An appeal was made to President George Bush as his term drew to a close in 1993, but Bush rejected it. In November 1993, President Bill Clinton said he had asked the Justice Department to review a request by then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin that he reduce Pollard's sentence. In March 1994, after receiving the Justice Department's recommendation, Clinton rejected the request. Pollard then turned his attention to forcing Israel to publicly claim him, officially petitioning for Israeli citizenship in September 1995. Under threat of a High Court petition, then-interior minister Ehud Barak reversed his position and granted Pollard a passport in 1996. Continuing to press the government, in May 1997 Pollard petitioned the High Court to order Netanyahu to declare he had been an agent of Israel and not a rogue, as the government had claimed. Meanwhile, the Netanyahu government had began to publicly sympathize with Pollard and in November 1997 Absorption Minister Yuli Edelstein became the first minister to visit him in prison; to be followed by Communications Minister Limor Livnat, Finance Minister Yaakov Neeman, Labor and Social Affairs Minister Eli Yishai, Science Minister Michael Eitan, and cabinet secretary Dan Naveh, who, in the spring of 1998, was put in charge of coordinating Pollard's release. Finally, on May 12, 1998, after more than a decade of denials, the government officially recognized Pollard as an Israeli agent.
Headlines
The Document
Speeches
Analysis
The Pollard Issue
| ||
| © 1995-1998, The Jerusalem Post - All rights reserved | Try our MIRROR SITE for faster connections |
Front Page | News | Business | Real Estate | Columns | Features | Opinion Sports | Tourism | Archive | Weather | Letters | Links | Feedback Advertising | Store | Subscribe | Email Edition | Classifieds | CD-ROM | Funds | EZ-Post | |
At the time, Israel maintained that Pollard was part of a "rogue," unauthorized intelligence operation and apologized to the US. The organized American Jewish community, embarrassed by the incident, wanted nothing to do with Pollard.