Anne Pollard, the first wife of Jonathan Pollard, who was freed on Friday after serving thirty years in a US prison for spying for Israel, is suing the Israeli government for millions of dollars, Channel 10 reported Sunday. The report did not mention the specific amount being claimed.
Pollard was arrested with her husband in 1985 and served 40 months of a five-year prison term for being an accessory to possessing classified documents.
She is suing Israel for damage caused to her image in the period before Jonathan’s release from prison and she is demanding that her own status in relation to Israel be resolved, according to the report.
Her claim seeks Israeli recognition that she was practically an agent of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency).
Pollard further claims that senior Israeli officials caused her suffering for presenting her in the eyes of the public as someone who had lost her mind.
“Anne Pollard tried many times to settle her status in Israel and she was told in no uncertain terms that she would have to wait for her Jonathan’s release.
The time has come for this obligation to be carried out,” one of Pollard’s lawyers Roy Attias told Channel 10.
Anne Pollard was released from prison in 1990 and was soon after served divorce papers from her husband. She lived for a period in Israel in the 1990s, but then returned to the US. Jonathan Pollard married a second time in 1993, to Esther Pollard.
In December 2010, Pollard arrived in Israel in poor health and broke, after turning to the Israeli Consulate in New York for help. She first turned to the consulate in Los Angeles in August 2010 and requested assistance.
According to the Prime Minister’s Office, Pollard then disappeared, only to reappear last week in New York. When officials from the consulate visited her apartment, they found that both she and her father were ill and impoverished, according to sources in the office of Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Netanyahu set up a team, headed by then cabinet secretary Tzvi Hauser and including then foreign minister Avigdor Liberman and Jewish Agency officials, to bring Pollard and her father to Israel and provide for their needs.
Netanyahu said that “Israel has a moral obligation” to help her out, and would do so, according to his office.
