Israel to Free American Imprisoned as a Spy for P.L.O.

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RAMLE, Israel, June 29 (AP) — An Israeli parole board today approved the early release of Terre Fleener, the 24-year-old American imprisoned for 20 months for spying for the Palestine Liberation Organization, and ordered her to leave Israel immediately, according to her lawyer.

The lawyer, Felicia Langer, said, “After looking at all the material submitted to them, the commissioners decided to release her on condition that she immediately leave the country.” “She could leave tomorrow and be at home Sunday,” Mrs. Langer told reporters after the brief hearing at the prison here in a suburb of Tel Aviv. Before the proceedings, Mrs.

Langer said she would argue for Miss Fleener’s freedom on grounds of her good behavior in prison, her good character and the fact that no actual damage or injury had resulted from her spying. Miss Fleener, who is from San Antonio, was convicted in January 1978 after a secret one-day trial. The charges against her were not specified at that time.

She had been arrested at the Tel Aviv airport the previous October upon her second arrival in Israel. She was originally sentenced to five years in prison, but the term was cut in half three weeks ago after Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance and other United States officials recommended leniency.

An Israeli Government source said the United States had exerted “tremendous pressure” for the release of Miss Fleener, the only American now imprisoned in Israel for security offenses. Israeli officials recently disclosed that she became friendly with members of the P.L.O. after Kuwait Airlines hired her in Lebanon four years ago as a flight attendant.

The newspaper Maariv recently printed a long article apparently quoting from the previously secret testimony at Miss Fleener’s trial. It reported that she said she gave the P.L.O. “photographs of hotels in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa.” “I photographed beaches I had been requested” to, she is quoted as having said at the trial.

“I told them about the security arrangements in the post offices and theaters I had been to in Israel.” In a court hearing last year on a petition to reduce Miss Fleener’s sentence, her lawyer said such pictures could be bought in Israel “by the hundreds.” The young woman’s “only intention was to do an innocent favor,” Mrs. Langer contended.

How this transcription was made

Masthead not readable on the scan. The label on the slide read: [masthead name not on clipping] — This scan carries TWO separate articles side by side on one page. This record is the main story across the three columns at the top. The second, unrelated story in the lower left of the same cut (“Palestinians May Join Autonomy Talk, Says A West Bank Leader”) is recorded separately as the next entry, citing the same image. — Read from the line across the top of the cut: “SATURDAY, JUNE 30, 1979”. 30 June 1979 was a Saturday. The dateline is “RAMLE, Israel, June 29,” one day earlier, as expected. Agrees with Maria’s label. — Complete story, three columns, ending at the rule at the foot of the page.

Cite this clipping

"Israel to Free American Imprisoned as a Spy for P.L.O.," (newspaper unidentified), 30 June 1979. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1979-037. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1979-037