Aviem Sella one of 73 people granted clemency; 70 have sentences commuted; list doesn’t include Trump or family; several Jewish convicts pardoned, incl. Lakewood Ponzi schemer
20 January 2021
US President Donald Trump pardoned 73 people and commuted the sentences of 70 additional individuals in the final hours of his term on Wednesday. The list included several Jewish convicts as well as Aviem Sella, a top Israeli Air Force pilot who was the recruiter and operator of spy Jonathan Pollard.
The list does not include Trump himself or members of his immediate family. It does, however, include his former chief strategist Steve Bannon and several family allies.
Sella fled to Israel days before Pollard was arrested outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC, was indicted for espionage in 1987, but was never extradited.
A former fighter pilot who took part in the 1981 strike on Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor, Sella started working for the Mossad intelligence agency in the early 1980s and received some of the classified top-secret documents provided by Pollard.
He remained deeply involved in the affair despite not running Pollard for most of the espionage stint.
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