Anne Henderson Pollard, estranged wife of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, arrived in Israel Wednesday evening to undergo medical tests and said she was “emotionally overwhelmed to be here.”
Pollard, who is suffering from a gastrointestinal disorder, will spend about 10 weeks in treatment at Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem, where she was admitted Thursday.
She indicated she was unhappy over the divorce proceedings initiated by her husband, who is serving a life sentence in the Marion, I11., maximum-security federal prison for spying for Israel. She expressed hope for a reconciliation and said she would continue to work “to secure Jonathan’s release. My most fervent desire is to see him released from that most awful prison,” she said. Anne Pollard, convicted as an accessory after the fact, was recently paroled to a halfway house after serving two-and-a-half years of two concurrent five-year sentences.
But she is constrained from making public statements or pleas on behalf of her case or that of her husband, who was convicted in 1987 of passing classified information to Israel.
Pollard was met at the airport by a group of supporters, including Knesset members Geula Cohen of Tehiya and Edna Solder of the Labor Party, and Herut Lapid, a kibbutznik active in helping former prisoners.
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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.