An e-mail addressed to President Obama from the Washington report on Middle East affairs and signed by more than 39 democratic members of the House of Representatives, demanded clemency for the accused and confessed spy. Pollard is serving a life sentence in prison in Butner, North Carolina, for passing classified information to an ally concerning Iraq, Syria and other Arab states, including evidence of Saddam Hussein's development of chemical weapons- a charge that normally carries a sentence of no more than 10 years. The Signed upon stated that: "we believe that there has been a great disparity from the standpoint of justice between the amount of time Mr. Pollard has served and the time that has been served -- or not served at all -- by many others who were found guilty of similar activity on behalf of nations that, like Israel, are not adversarial to us." On and interview to Maariv Newspaper Pollard stated that his own hope is that if the president were to do this it would contribute to the political climate within the democracy of Israel to enhance the peace process.
