No Conjugal Visits for Pollard

Quick Takes: News From Israel You May Have Missed

Aaron Klein - The Jewish Press [NY] - June 8, 2005

On the heels of a recent Middle East tour by Laura Bush to promote women's rights in the region, the female members of Israel's Knesset have petitioned the first lady to lobby for the release of Jonathan Pollard, in part citing the spy's inability to have children while jailed.

Appealing to Bush's drive to promote women's rights and family values, the female Knesset members, in a letter to the first lady, stressed, "Jonathan and his wife were prohibited from having conjugal visits throughout all the years of his incarceration, and they have thereby been prevented from establishing a family with children."

The letter also lamented "grave descriptions of the torment that Jonathan has undergone throughout the years of his imprisonment have been published."

A recent petition to Israel's Supreme Court outlined years of abuse and torture Pollard says he suffered in American imprisonment. It stated Pollard was subject to anti-Semitic violence; underwent torture treatments in which he was repeatedly chained to an iron chair, bolted to the floor of a shower stall and blasted with torrents of ice water for long periods of time; was electrified with a high-voltage cattle prod; was subject to public anal exams; and spent many years in solitary confinement in a small cell that was once sprayed with toxic gas, among other claims.