"Shameful that We Have to Sue Govt." - Esther Pollard

MA'ARIV - September 8, 1999 - [Translated from Hebrew] by Rivka Freilich

"If Ehud Barak doesn't understand that he is responsible for my husband's life then the Supreme Court of Israel will have make him accept his responsibility. It is shameful that the court has to supervise the Government to force it to take care of an Israeli agent." So said Esther Pollard, wife of Israeli agent, Jonathan Pollard, who is in prison in the United States.

"We did not ask that Jonathan be linked to the release of terrorist prisoners, but it is a fact that he was. Now Barak has cut him loose, undoing the link between the release of prisoners and my husband," Esther Pollard said yesterday, after Jonathan Pollard's petition was filed in Supreme Court.

"The time has come for the people of Israel to understand that we are not talking about some humanitarian effort, but about an Israeli agent who has been abandoned to his fate in the United States. The nation knows that something has gone terribly wrong here, and we will keep fighting for justice until Jonathan Pollard is free."