Jonathan Pollard, the former U.S. Navy civilian employee jailed for spying for Israel, is in the news again. Arrested on charges of spying for Israel in 1985 and sentenced to life in prison, Pollard's case has long been a source of tension between the two nations.
Relations between Israel and the U.S. have been tense in the past few weeks over the Iran Nuclear Deal. Some U.S. officials feel that releasing Pollard could ease those tensions, while others expect it to take months, possibly until his parole consideration date in November, according to Wall Street Journal.
Anne Pollard, his former wife, told Israel's Channel 2 TV Saturday night that "that there is no official word that Jonathan is being released on any date. I just want to see him out, I can't bear it anymore, that he sat and lost all of his life in jail, it's a crime, it's such a crime," she said, according to Huffington Post.
"We have not received any word, and I would expect that either I or my client would be the ones who would be notified," one of Pollard's attorneys, Eliot Lauer, said to the Times of Israel.
Reacting to the news in the Wall Street Journal that American officials were pressing for Pollard's release in the coming weeks, the White House said that the decision to grant Pollard parole would have no connection to any efforts to calm tensions with Israel over the recent nuclear deal with Iran.
"Mr. Pollard's status will be determined by the United States Parole Commission according to standard procedures. There is absolutely zero linkage between Mr. Pollard's status and foreign policy considerations," said Alistair Baskey, spokesman for the National Security Council, according to New York Times.
Pollard was a civilian analyst with the U.S. Navy when he was arrested for passing secret documents to Israel. He is serving a life sentence in a North Carolina prison. The Federal Bureau of Prisons website lists his expected release date as Nov. 21, 2015.
