The N.Y. Jewish Week
Anne Henderson Pollard is to be transferred from the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minn., to a minimum security women’s prison in Danbury, Conn., according to her lawyer, Nathan Dershowitz.
But while her father, Bernard Henderson, said the change would be a “tremendous improvement,” he repeated a call for a nationwide campaign among Jewish and interfaith organizations to demand her parole.
Pollard, 28, is serving two concurrent five-year prison terms for acting as an accessory to the espionage activities of her husband, Jonathan Jay Pollard.
Jonathan Pollard, the onetime civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy, was convicted of selling classified information to Israel. He has been sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole.
Public concern for Anne Pollard’s incarceration has focused on her medical condition. She reportedly suffers from biliary dyskinesia, a rare digestive ailment which causes her difficulty when digesting food.
She has been denied proper medical treatment, family spokespersons and attorneys charge.
Dershowitz said he had received a letter from J. Michael Quinlan, director of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, saying that Anne Pollard is to be transferred to the Danbury camp, a facility that is “level one,” or lowest level, security.
The facility is much closer to her family, who lives in Secaucus, N.J.
“I think it’s a very appropriate facility,” Dershowitz said, adding that he understands physicians will be available to Pollard, and that the facility has arrangements for expert consultations with the Yale Medical Center, where Carol Pollard, Jonathan’s sister, works.
‘LOOKS TERRIBLE’
According to Rabbi Avraham Weiss, of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, N.Y., Pollard “looks terrible,” has visible skin rashes over her face and hands, and her eyes are infected.
Weiss, who had a six-hour visit with Pollard last week at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, discussed his recent visits with both Pollards with The Jewish Week, and at a news conference this week sponsored by Justice for the Pollards, a group active on behalf of the couple and run by Bernard Henderson.
Groups around the country that are active on behalf of the Pollards are sending out a petition that Anne Pollard be paroled, for which she was eligible as of August, and that she receive proper medical care, according to Henderson, who also attended the news conference.
Wiess’ visit to Anne Pollard followed one to Jonathan Pollard about a month ago at the U.S. Penitentiary in Marion, Ill.
The three-hour visit with Jonathan Pollard was arranged with the help of the Aleph Institute, a Chabad-Lubavitch organization which facilitates rabbinic visits to prisons around the country.
The Illinois prison is the highest maximum security prison in the country, where most of the prisoners are those who have caused trouble in other prisons and who are considered dangerous.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
