What Pollard Went Through Before Court Hearing
Arutz Sheva - Israel National News - November 16, 2003
The American court system has refused Jonathan Pollard's request for a re-sentencing session. American "higher-ups" reportedly ordered him treated very cruelly for 2 weeks before the hearing.
The American court system has refused Jonathan Pollard's request for a re-sentencing session. After his arrest in 1985, he was sentenced, in contradiction with a plea bargain agreement, to life in prison - yet his lawyer at the time, inexplicably, did not file a routine appeal. The result was that Pollard was prevented from appealing his sentence. His current lawyers therefore demanded a re-sentencing session two months ago - and it was this request that was refused.
Pollard's wife Esther writes, "Many people wondered why it was that Jonathan had been summoned to Washington at all [for the court hearing on the above request]. They wondered even more when Jonathan neither spoke, nor was spoken to, during the court proceedings." In explanation, Esther Pollard provided a detailed description of the two weeks of torture her husband experienced at the hands of unnamed American "higher-ups."
Her full article, entitled "A Portrait of American Justice," can be read at here. A summarizing paragraph reads as follows:
"In short, orders from 'higher up' created a situation designed to bring Jonathan into court looking and acting like a broken man, and daring him to act out. For two weeks Jonathan had been [actively and purposely] kept in extreme isolation, no contact with the outside world, no distractions, no sensory input, no auditory or visual relief, no relief for boredom, no clean clothes, no clean underwear, no visits, no humanity, no contact with his attorneys, moved about only in heavy shackles and chains, no exercise and so on. After two weeks of this extreme deprivation, he was to be kept hungry and thirsty, and then brought into the court room under threat that if he so much as looked at anyone, he would be forcibly removed and punished."
Several events will take place on behalf of Jonathan Pollard in Jerusalem today. Leading rabbis such as Rabbis Mordechai Eliyahu, Yaakov Ariel, Shlomo Aviner, and others will gather at Yeshivat HaKotel this afternoon to call for his release, and immediately afterwards a prayer rally will be held at the Western Wall. Participants will march from there to HaEmek Street in the western half of the city, from where - in accordance with a compromise solution reached with the police, who did not want to allow a march at all - they will take buses and cars to the Binyanei HaUmah Convention Center. There, while the UJC's General Assembly holds its opening session, a giant Pollard rally will be held. Long-time Pollard activist Eli Joseph explains that much of the Pollard supporters' protests are directed against American Jewry, which has done little to "show solidarity with their suffering brother. When we were in trouble, he helped us, but now that he's in trouble, we allow him to rot in prison."