Israel has granted citizenship to Jonathan Pollard, the American Jew serving a life sentence in the United States for spying for Israel.
Interior Minister Haim Ramon presented the papers to Pollard’s lawyers in a brief ceremony Wednesday here.
The gesture was an official stamp to the decision made last fall by Ramon’s predecessor, Ehud Barak. That decision reversed an earlier rejection.
Pollard now has both U.S. and Israeli citizenship.
Pollard’s lawyers said they hoped to present their client with the documents in coming days.
Israel was doing all it could to secure Pollard’s release from jail, Ramon said.
Pollard, 37, who has served 10 years in federal prisons, hopes that the citizenship will improve the chances for early release.
Lawyer Larry Dub said Pollard’s parole file was already at the White House, waiting to be reviewed.
In March 1992, President Clinton denied Pollard’s request for a sentence reduction, “based on the gave nature of his offense.”
During his last trip to Washington in September, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said he hoped that Pollard would be freed and allowed to go to Israel. But the president turned down a request for clemency.
A Justice Department spokesman said in November that Israeli citizenship would not affect any application Pollard makes for parole or clemency.
Pollard, who was arrested outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington in 1985, provided Israel with satellite photographs of Arab countries while he worked as a U.S. Navy intelligence analyst.
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