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Mordechai Vanunu (מרדכי ואנונו) (born October 13, 1954), also known by his baptismal name John Crossman, is an Israeli former nuclear technician who revealed details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986. He was subsequently lured to Rome by an American Mossad agent, abducted and smuggled to Israel, where he was tried behind closed doors and convicted of treason.

After 18 years in prison, more than 11 years of which were served in solitary confinement, Vanunu was released from prison in 2004, subject to a broad array of restrictions on his speech and movement. Since then he has been briefly arrested several times for multiple violations of those restrictions, including giving various interviews to a foreign journalists and attempting to leave Israel. In March 2005 he was charged with 21 counts of "contravening a lawful direction", with a maximum of two years' imprisonment per count, and then released to await trial, though he remains under the same restrictions as before.

Vanunu was seen by many human rights groups as a prisoner of conscience. The Israeli government still considers him a traitor, and Vanunu continues to be highly critical of Israel's actions, even rejecting the need for a Jewish state.

Background

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Vanunu was born in Marrakech, Morocco to a Jewish family; his father was a rabbi. He had 11 brothers and sisters, and emigrated under the Law of Return with his family to Israel in 1963. Vanunu completed his three years of military service in the sapper unit of the Israeli Defense Forces, with the rank of sergeant. After being honorably discharged, Vanunu became a philosophy student at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where he became critical of many policies of the Israeli government, forming a group called "Campus" with four other Jewish students and five Arab students. Vanunu also admired his professor, Evron Pollakov, a left-wing professor at Ben-Gurion University who had refused to serve with the IDF in Lebanon and had been jailed because of it. Vanunu also was affiliated with a group called "Movement for the Advancement of Peace".

Between 1976 and 1985, Vanunu was employed as a nuclear technician at the Negev Nuclear Research Center, an Israeli facility which, according to the majority of defense experts, is used for manufacturing nuclear weapons; it is located in the Negev desert south of Dimona. Most worldwide intelligence agencies estimate that the state of Israel developed nuclear weapons as early as the 1960s, but the country has purposely maintained a stance of "nuclear ambiguity", neither acknowledging nor denying that it possesses the weapons. It was during his employment there that one of the left-wing groups in which Vanunu held membership, protested against Israel's 1981 destruction of Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor, which was believed to be part of the Iraqi nuclear weapons development program. The Jerusalem Post stated that he took part in these protests [1], arguing that this showed that Vanunu was motivated by antipathy to Israel in his later actions. Vanunu has not responded to these claims.

At Dimona, it is believed that Vanunu became increasingly troubled about the widely believed Israeli nuclear weapons program on which he worked. In 1985, he was laid off from Dimona and left Israel. He arrived at Nepal, and considered a conversion to Buddhism, later traveling to Burma and Thailand. In 1986, he traveled to Sydney, Australia. While there, Vanunu lived in a hostel in Kings Cross and worked in odd jobs, first as a hotel dishwasher and later as a taxi driver.

Vanunu began to attend the local church, St. John's. There he met the Reverend John McKnight, who worked with the homeless and drug addicts. Vanunu converted to Christianity and was baptized into the Anglican Church, who he informed of his knowledge of Israel's nuclear weapons program and his pictures. Through the church, he met Oscar Guerrero, a fringe journalist first tried to interest Newsweek in the story but also tipped off the Israei consulate on Vanunu's story. who Peter Hounam, a journalist from The Sunday Times and .

Illegal Seizure

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File:Vanunu3a.jpg
Vanunu revealed details of his detention by writing on his hand: "Vanunu M was hijacked in Rome. ITL. 30.9.86, 21:00. Came to Rome by fly BA504."
On October 5, 1986, the British newspaper The Sunday Times ran the story on its front page under the headline: "Revealed: the secrets of Israel's nuclear arsenal."

In early September 1986, Vanunu flew to London with Hounam, and in violation of his non-disclosure agreement, revealed to The Sunday Times his knowledge of the Israeli nuclear program, including photographs he had secretly taken at the Dimona site. Anxious to avoid being duped by another Hitler Diaries-sized hoax, The Sunday Times spent extensive time verifying Vanunu’s story with leading experts.[2] Apparently frustrated by the delay while Hounam was completing his research, Vanunu approached a rival newspaper, the tabloid Sunday Mirror, whose owner was Robert Maxwell. In 1991, a self-described former Mossad officer called Ari Ben-Menashe alleged that Maxwell had tipped off the Mossad about Vanunu. It is also possible that they were alerted by enquiries made to the Israeli Embassy in London by Sunday Mirror journalists.

On September 30, 1986, an American Mossad agent, Cheryl Bentov, operating under the name of "Cindy" and masquerading as an American tourist, began an affair with Vanunu, eventually persuading him to fly to Rome with her on a holiday. The Israeli government had promised Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that they would not conduct operations on British soil; therefore it was important to get Vanunu out of the UK under his own volition. The territorial integrity of Italy did not receive the same respect. Once in Rome, Mossad agents drugged him and smuggled him to Israel against his will, on a freighter. That marked the beginning of what was to be more than a decade of solitary confinement in Israeli prisons.

Several days after he was returned to Israel, on October 5, the Sunday Times published the information he had revealed, and estimated that Israel had produced more than 100 nuclear warheads. Vanunu was then put on trial in Israel on charges of treason and espionage. The trial, closed to the public, was held at the District Court in Jerusalem, before Chief Justice Eliahu Noam and judges Zvi Tal and Shalom Brener. He was not permitted contact with the media but he wrote the details of his capture (or "hijacking" as he put it) on the palm of his hand, and while being transported he held his hand against the van's window so that waiting journalists could get the information. This act caused Israel's standard procedures for transporting prisoners to be changed.

Imprisonment

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On February 27, 1988, an Israeli court sentenced him to 18 years' imprisonment from the date of his capture. The Israeli government refused to release the transcript of the court case until, after the threat of legal action, it agreed to let censored extracts be published in Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israeli newspaper, in late 1999.

The death penalty in Israel is restricted to special circumstances. In 2004 former Mossad director Shabtai Shavit told Reuters that the option of extrajudicial execution was considered in 1986, but rejected because "Jews don't do that to other Jews." [3]

The Israeli government kept him in near total isolation for more than 11 years, allegedly out of concern that he might reveal more Israeli nuclear secrets and because he was still bound by the contract that swore him to secrecy on the subject. However, many critics argue that Vanunu had no additional information that would pose a real security threat to Israel, and that the Israeli government's real motivation is a desire to avoid political embarrassment for itself and allies such as the United States. Dr. Ray Kidder, a senior American nuclear scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has said:

"On the basis of this research and my own professional experience, I am ready to challenge any official assertion that Mr. Vanunu possesses any technical nuclear information not already made public." [4]

His last appeal against his conviction, to the Supreme Court of Israel in 1990, failed.

While in prison, Vanunu says, he took part in small acts of rebellion, such as refusing to talk with the guards, reading only English-language newspapers, and watching only BBC TV. He even refused to eat food when it was served to him so as to maintain a small portion of his life not under Israeli control. "He is the most stubborn, principled, and tough person I have ever met," said his lawyer, Avigdor Feldman.

Release

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In 2004, shortly before his scheduled release, Vanunu remained defiant under interrogation by the security service Shin Bet. In recordings of the interview made public after his release, he is heard saying "I am neither a traitor nor a spy, I only wanted the world to know what was happening." He also said, "We don't need a Jewish state. There needs to be a Palestinian state. Jews can, and have lived anywhere, so a Jewish State is not necessary." [5][6]

Vanunu was released from prison on April 21, 2004. He indicated a desire to completely dissociate himself from Israel, refusing to speak in Hebrew, and planning to move to Scandinavia, Ireland or France as soon as the Israeli government would permit him to do so.

A number of restrictions were placed upon Vanunu by Israeli authorities, who stated their reason was fear of him spreading further state secrets and that he is still bound by his non-disclosure agreement. These stipulate that he:

  • has to register to live in an Israeli city of his choice.
  • has to give notice to the authorities if he wishes to travel to another city.
  • is not allowed to leave Israel for 6 months. This restriction has since been extended to April 2006 [7].
  • is not allowed to contact foreigners either by phone or in person.
  • is not allowed to enter any embassy, visit any port of entry, or come within 500 metres of any international border crossing.

Vanunu says that his knowledge is now all outdated, and that he has nothing more he could possibly reveal that is not already widely known. Despite the stated restrictions, since his release Vanunu has freely given interviews to the foreign press, including a live phone interview to BBC Radio Scotland.

On April 22, 2004, Vanunu asked the Norwegian government for a Norwegian passport and asylum in Norway for "humanitarian reasons", according to Norwegian news agencies. He also sent applications to other countries, and stated that he would accept asylum in any country because he fears for his life. Former conservative Norwegian Prime Minister Kåre Willoch has asked the conservative government to give Vanunu asylum, and the University of Tromsø has offered him a job. This application, as well as an application for asylum in Sweden has been rejected, since neither country accepts absentee asylum applications.

2004 arrests

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On Thursday, November 11, 2004, Vanunu was arrested by the International Investigations Unit of the Israeli police at around 9 AM while eating breakfast. The arrest stemmed from an ongoing probe examining suspicions of leaking national secrets and violating legal rulings since his release from prison. About 20 commandos wearing bulletproof vests and carrying machine guns entered into the walled compound of St. George's Anglican Church in East Jerusalem, where Vanunu had been renting a room since his release. Police removed papers and a computer from his room. After a few hours' detention, Vanunu was put under house arrest, which was to last seven days.[8]

The arrest came three months after Vanunu said in an interview that Israel was behind the John F. Kennedy assassination. In the interview he had said the assassination was due to "pressure [Kennedy] exerted on then-head of government David Ben-Gurion to shed light on Dimona's nuclear reactor." [9] (See also: Kennedy assassination theories).

On December 24, 2004, in a vehicle marked as belonging to foreign press, Vanunu was apprehended by Israeli Police while he was attempting to exit Israel. In violation of his release restrictions (see above), he was entering the West Bank, allegedly to attend mass at the Church of the Nativity. After posting bail of 50,000 NIS, he was released into five-day house arrest as reported by the BBC.

In an interview with Jeff Heinrich from the Montreal Gazette, he said he wanted to emigrate to Canada: "I choose Canada".

2005 arrests

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On January 26, 2005, BBC reported that its Jerusalem deputy bureau chief, Simon Wilson, was banned from Israel after BBC refused to submit interview material made with Vanunu to Israeli censors. Wilson was allowed to return to Israel on March 12 after signing an apology letter acknowledging that he defied the law [10].

On March 17, 2005 Vanunu was charged with 21 counts of "contravening a lawful direction" (maximum penalty two years' imprisonment per count) and one count of "attempting to contravene a lawful direction".

Support

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The European Parliament has condemned Israel's treatment of Vanunu, and referred to his detention by Mossad agents as a gross violation of Italian sovereignty and international law. Amnesty International described his treatment as constituting "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment [...] such as is prohibited by international law".

Vanunu received the Right Livelihood Award in 1987, and was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Tromsø in 2001. He has been nominated by Joseph Rotblat for the Nobel Peace Prize every year from 1988 to 2004. In 2005 he received the Peace Prize of the Norwegian People (Folkets fredspris). Previous recipients of this prize includes Vytautas Landsbergis (1991), Alva Myrdal (1982), Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams. Myrdal, Corrigan and Williams also received the Nobel Peace Prize.

In December 2004, as a statement of solidarity, he was elected by the students of the University of Glasgow to serve for three years as Rector [11]. On Friday April 22 2005 he was formally installed in the post [12], but cannot carry out any of its functions as he is still confined to Israel. Since then the Glasgow Herald has launched a campaign for his release.

See also

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References

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  • Black, Ian. Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services, Grove Press, 1992, ISBN 0802132863
  • Cohen, Avner. Israel and the Bomb, New York: Columbia University Press (1999), ISBN 0231104839
  • Cohen, Yoel. The Whistleblower of Dimona: Israel, Dimona & the Bomb. ISBN 084191432X
  • Gaffney, Mark. Dimona: The Third Temple? The Story Behind the Vanunu Revelation. ISBN 0915597772
  • Gilling, Tom and John McKnight. Trial and Error — Mordechai Vanunu and Israel's Nuclear Bomb. 1991 Monarch Publications. ISBN 185424129X
  • Hounam, Peter. The Woman from Mossad: The Torment of Mordechai Vanunu. ISBN 1583940057 paperback edition title: The Woman from Mossad: The Story of Mordechai Vanunu & the Israeli Nuclear Program
  • Toscano, Louis. Triple Cross. 1990 Birch Lane Press ISBN 155972028X
  • Spiro, Gideon. Vanunu and the Israeli Bomb.
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Source documents and interviews

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Israeli government statements

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Human rights bodies

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Current affairs coverage

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Public statements by Mordechai Vanunu

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Advocacy websites

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