Peres to push Pollard's release ahead of medal
President Shimon Peres said Tuesday that he would do
whatever possible to bring about the release of Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard
before he receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from US President Barack
Obama.
Peres responded to a petition signed by more than 15,000
people calling upon him to take advantage of being granted the medal as an
opportunity to push Obama to commute Pollard's sentence to the more than 26
years of his life sentence he has already served.
"As president, I see it as very important to work
determinedly to bring about Jonathan Pollard's release," Peres said.
"We are all united in the call to release him
immediately. In all my meetings with president Obama and top American
government leaders I raised the request to release Pollard and I will continue
to do so when I meet with Obama in June. My office is in touch with the
campaign for Pollard's release and we will work hand in hand in any way
possible to bring Jonathan Pollard home."
Obama announced three weeks ago at the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference that he would give Peres the medal.
Peres’s office said he had discussed Pollard’s fate with Obama when they met in
Washington ahead of the conference.
But Pollard is still serving the life sentence he was
given more than 26 years ago for passing classified information to an ally.
Obama has not responded to calls by many top current and former Israeli and
American officials to commute Pollard’s sentence to time served.
“Due to the superior values the medal represents, we feel
we cannot reconcile you receiving it when the United States is still holding
Pollard in prison,” the petition, which was signed by nearly 12,000 people at
press time, states.
“We ask you to take advantage of your unprecedented
diplomatic standing in order to work for Jonathan’s immediate release before
you are given the medal. Otherwise receiving the medal would make a mockery of
Israel.”
According to the 1987 Eban Commission Report, the Knesset
committee appointed to investigate the Pollard affair, Peres personally
initiated and authorized the return to the US of all of the documents that
Pollard had provided to Israel with his fingerprints still upon them, which
helped the prosecution’s case. This was the first and only case in the history
of modern espionage in which a prime minister actively assisted in the
indictment and prosecution of his own country’s agent.
The organizers of the petition stressed that they were
not asking Peres to condition receiving the medal on Pollard’s freedom. Obama
is due to give Peres the medal at a special ceremony in Washington on June 13.
Many well-known Israelis from the Left side of the
political map signed the petition, including former education minister Amnon
Rubinstein. The former Shinui and Meretz MK said it would be fitting if Peres
came back from Washington with both the medal and Pollard, and that Peres
should work behind the scenes between now and June to make sure this would
happen.
Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein, who was the
first minister to visit Pollard, said he believed Peres could succeed in
bringing Pollard home.
“One additional kvetch could be all that’s necessary for
the effort to succeed,” Edelstein said.
Peres’s legal adviser Nadav Tamir responded in an Army
Radio interview that Peres’s office was part of the effort to bring about
Pollard’s release and would coordinate efforts with the people behind the
petition.
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