Washington – Congressman Who ‘Saved Pollard’ Pleads with Obama

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    Washington – Former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton, who Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard credits with saving his life, rejoined the effort to persuade US President Barack Obama to commute his life sentence on Tuesday.

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    Following Pollard’s sentencing in 1987, he was sent to a Springfield, Missouri, prison hospital for the criminally insane. Pollard’s wife Esther said that at that facility he was kept in what she described as “inhumane conditions,” isolated and naked, without blankets, sheets, or his glasses in sub-zero temperatures for more than a year.

    “Periodically, a blanket would be thrown over him to cover his nakedness and he would be led out to meet FBI interrogators who showed him lists of prominent American Jews,” Esther Pollard said. “They told him that if he wanted to get out of this place, he would have to finger names on the list as his co-conspirators. Of course, Jonathan refused.” She said Pollard’s nightmare went on until his parents contacted Hamilton, who was their congressman. Hamilton intervened and began asking very embarrassing questions about why Pollard was being held in a prison hospital for the criminally insane. The government readily admitted that he was not a patient and that he was not there for treatment.

    From the Springfield, Missouri hospital, Pollard was sent to a facility in Marion, Illinois, where he was held in solitary confinement three stories underground for six and a half years. Amnesty International later succeeded in forcing the closure of the unit in the jail where he was incarcerated, but Pollard has said the conditions there were far better than at Springfield.

    “It was because of Hamilton’s intervention that Jonathan was transferred out of what he still refers to as a scene from Dante’s Inferno,” Esther Pollard said. “Were it not for Lee Hamilton’s principled intervention years ago to pull Jonathan out of a situation of unwarranted severe affliction — cruel and inhumane punishment — it is not certain that Jonathan would still be alive today. We will always be grateful to him.”

    Continue reading at The Jerusalem Post


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    3 Comments
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    Liepa
    Liepa
    13 years ago

    The unusually harsh and cruel sentencing of Jonathan Pollard can be directly attributed to Caspar Weinberger, yimach shmoi v’zichroi lo’netzach, Secretary of Defense during the Reagan administration.

    Yaakov2
    Yaakov2
    13 years ago

    Why are there thousands of rallies for Rubashkin every Monday and Thursday with millions of dollars raised for his release with the relentless recruitment of every legal professor and every x-Justice to protest the travesty of justice against Rubashkin….

    While the same is not done for Pollard?

    What is our standard for being outraged and what is our standard as to when we go ALL OUT to save a frum Yids Life?

    Is our standard (selfish) that all our Hemishe Mosdos go all out to the last mile to do it, ONLY IF he gave our Mosod a lot of Tzadeka before being incarcerated?