Convicted spy Jonathan Pollard still poses a threat to the US — even after spending 30 years in federal prison for selling top-secret information to Israel, prosecutors said Monday.
Pollard, who was released last month, appeared in Manhattan federal court for a hearing over whether to ease conditions of his parole.
“The majority of information Mr. Pollard had and passed along 30 years ago remains classified,” prosecutor Rebecca Tinio told Judge Katherine Forrest.
Pollard, 61, is fighting to ease his parole conditions, which require him to wear a GPS monitoring bracelet, undergo monitoring of his home and work computers and abide by a 7 p.m.-to-7 a.m. curfew — saying that they’re restrictive and interfere with his religious observance as an Orthodox Jew.
Lawyer Eliot Lauer said Pollard can’t observe Sabbath because the GPS monitoring device he wears now requires him to charge the battery during the holy time — a “desecration” of his faith.
“The battery charger is no different than putting a plug into a socket,” said Lauer. “Jews do not do anything on the Sabbath that creates an electrical current.”
Forrest said she wants more information from the US Parole Commission before deciding what to do.
Pollard, who worked as a civilian naval intelligence analyst, was released from a North Carolina prison where he was locked up for three decades for selling more than a million pages of highly classified documents to Israel.
In a recent court filing, Lauer quoted two former top national security officials saying that any information Pollard “might still recall after 30 years is ‘of no value to anyone today.’”
Pollard declined comment as he left court with his wife.