(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Jonathan Pollard, a Jewish American spy who passed US secrets to Israel, was freed yesterday after nearly 30 years in jail.
But within hours of Pollard's release from a federal prison in North Carolina, his lawyers announced a legal challenge to the conditions of his five-year probationary period, calling it "vindictive and cruel".
The Texas-born Pollard was granted Israeli citizenship in 1995, and his family has said he wants to settle in Israel. His whereabouts yesterday were not known.
A US Navy intelligence analyst when he was caught passing sensitive security documents to Israel, Pollard is seen by some Israelis as a national hero. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed his release.
"After three long and difficult decades, Jonathan is at last reunited with his family," Netanyahu said.
The Pollard case has been a major bone of contention between Israel and the United States, with successive US presidents starting with Ronald Reagan refusing Israeli demands for Pollard's release.
Two New York-based lawyers for the 61-year-old Pollard, Jacques Semmelman and Eliot Lauer, vowed to contest the conditions of his probation as "unreasonable and unlawful".
They specifically argued against a requirement for "GPS monitoring of his person" and monitoring of his computer use at home and work, which they called "career-impairing". He is also subject to curfew and travel restrictions.
His lawyers have indicated that he has been promised a job and a place to live in the New York area.
The lawyers said Pollard had been a "model prisoner" and that there was no reason to fear he might commit acts of violence or reveal further US intelligence that by now, in any case, would be so outdated as to be meaningless.
But President Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said that "the president does not have any plans to alter the terms of his parole".
Pollard's release came almost exactly 30 years after his arrest on November 21, 1985.
A US court jailed Pollard for life in 1987 after he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to deliver national defence information to a foreign government.
Over the years Israeli right-wing activists have sought to turn Pollard into an icon, a fierce defender of Israeli security, even when it meant spying on Israel's closest ally.
In the United States, however, Pentagon and CIA officials are still reeling with anger from the classified defence documents that Pollard leaked.
In a sign of the case's sensitivity, Netanyahu had asked his ministers to refrain from claiming victory upon Pollard's release, local media reported.
The release allows Pollard, who became very religious behind bars, to observe the Jewish Sabbath starting at sundown yesterday. While in prison, he married Esther Zeitz, a Canadian Jew who campaigned for his release.
As a Navy analyst with an advanced security clearance, Pollard had access to top secret information.
Pollard made contact in June 1984 with an Israeli colonel, Aviem Sella, who was studying in New York, and offered to provide him with classified information.
He soon began supplying a stream of intelligence, reportedly thousands of documents.
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.
Washington accused Pollard of seriously damaging US interests during the Cold War.
He claimed only to have passed information vital to Israel's security that the Americans had withheld, but security experts feared sensitive information might have reached Soviet hands.
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