Jonathan Pollard ‘Release Date’ Scrubbed From U.S. Prisons Web Site
Image by getty images
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons changed Jonathan Pollard’s release date on its website from “Nov. 15 2015” to “Life.”
A spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons was unable Monday to explain the change on the bureau’s “inmate locator,” which he confirmed occurred recently.
Under sentencing guidelines in place in 1987 when Pollard, a former U.S. Navy analyst, got his life sentence for spying for Israel, he is eligible for automatic parole consideration on Nov. 21 of next year, but that does not guarantee a release, said Ed Ross, the spokesman.
“There has been no status change,” Ross said, describing the change as “administrative.”
Pollard’s wife, Esther, told the Jerusalem Post she was gratified at the change, saying the earlier status lent credence to the erroneous argument that he was likely to be released next year, and undercut efforts to get President Obama to commute Pollard’s sentence.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
