Rabin Asks Clinton to Free Pollard

Hillel Kuttler - The Jerusalem Post - November 10, 1993

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has sent a letter to President Bill Clinton requesting that Jonathan Pollard's life sentence for spying for Israel be reduced to time served.

Ambassador Itamar Rabinovich told a half-dozen Pollard supporters during a private meeting yesterday that Rabin had sent the letter recently, but provided no date, participants said.

Rabinovich also would not assure them that Rabin would raise the matter with Clinton during his White House meeting Friday.

This development was revealed as Pollard supporters lobbied on Capitol Hill yesterday for Congress to press Clinton for his release, after eight years in various Federal prisons.

A full-page advertisement appeared in yesterday's New York Times urging Clinton to commute the sentence on humanitarian grounds.

Those who met with Rabinovich urged "the need for a public Israeli statement that now is the time for Pollard to be freed," said Sam Kaplan, of Vancouver, British Columbia, whose Pollard Committee organized the lobbying effort.


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