Knesset Control Committee to hold meeting on Pollard
Pollard's representatives, wife not invited
Rebecca Anna Stoil - The Jerusalem Post - December 5, 2010
The Knesset's State Control Committee will meet Monday morning to discuss State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss's opinion on the government's activities to secure the release of Jonathan Pollard.
Cabinet Secretary Tzvi Hauser is expected to participate in the hearing, together with representatives from the Justice and Foreign Ministries, but Pollard's most vocal representative, his wife Esther, will not be in attendance. Esther Pollard, who blasted the 2009 State Comptroller's report as a "whitewash" by the government of its failures to gain her husband's release, was not invited to attend the meeting.
Committee spokesman Yigal Amitai said that he had been approached last week by advocates of Pollard's cause [J4JP note: This is not a reference to anyone who actually represents Jonathan Pollard; nor is this a reference to anyone who works with J4JP or The Vaad] and that he referred them to the committee secretary to be included on the attendance list. Amitai emphasized that anybody who wanted to attend Monday's hearing, and requested an invitation from the committee leadership, would have been given an invitation. Pollard has spent 26 years in prison in America after agreeing to a plea bargain that included one count of espionage in exchange for a life sentence. [J4JP correction: Jonathan Pollard did not plea bargain for a life sentence. The median sentence for the offense Pollard committed is 2 to 4 years. His life sentence was a complete abrogation of his plea deal by the US government.]