Mordechai Vanunu - Israel

An Interview with Mordechai Vanunu

by Amy Goodman

Democracy Now, August 18, 2004

Mordechai Vanunu worked as a nuclear technician at Dimona, Israel's secret nuclear installation from 1976 to 1985. He worked there at a time when Israel was insisting it would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East. What Vanunu discovered is that Israel had secretly developed an extensive nuclear program, hiding its existence from the Israeli people and parliament, and the world.

Vanunu leaked information and photos of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the Sunday Times in London. He was subsequently kidnapped by Israeli spy agency Mossad in Italy and then jailed. He would go on to spend 18 years behind bars including 11 in solitary confinement.

He was released on April 21 under strict government restrictions.

Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman reached Vanunu on his cell phone in East Jerusalem where he has been staying since his release in April. He defied the Israeli government's restriction on speaking with foreigners to talk with us.

The nationally syndicated radio and TV program Democracy Now! aired the first part of its interview with Vanunu on its Aug. 18th broadcast. (The remaining portions of the interview will be aired on Aug. 19th)

Below is a transcript of the first part of the interview.

AMY GOODMAN: Hello? Is this Mordechai Vanunu?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Hi. This is Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! And I would like to be able to talk to you. We are a public radio and television program in the United States.

MORDECHAI VANUNU: Good evening.

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to be with you.

MORDECHAI VANUNU: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: How does it feel to be free? How does it feel to be out of prison?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: Well it is wonderful to be free. But I am not allowed to speak to foreigners and I am not allowed to leave the country. So I'm not so happy. But on the other side I am very glad that I can at least enjoy some freedom.

AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli government has called you a traitor. What is your response to that?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: Well, I answer this. When I get out of the prison, I am saying many, many times that I am very glad, happy and proud to reveal its nuclear secrets to all the world and to let all the world to see the stupidity of Israel's nuclear weapons policy and the danger of a nuclear weapons policy in secret by Israel. And I was not a traitor. The real traitors are Israel's government who was behind this nuclear weapons policy for 40 years, and continues. They are betraying the Israeli citizens, and betraying the Arab community, and betraying all of humanity and the world, the human beings of all the world. They are the real traitors.

AMY GOODMAN: What are the secrets that you reveal that you think were most significant?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: Excuse me, but I could not understand, hear you.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain, Mordechai Vanunu, the secrets you feel were most significant for the world to know? You were imprisoned 18 years ago. Can you say what you were trying to reveal to the world?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: Well, it was very open and very clear: the secrets that were published by the Sunday Times in 1986. The main points were: one, the amount of Israel's nuclear weapons, how many Israel had, that no one could predict or know, including the CIA. They were thinking about a number like 10 or 15. But I came out with a number between 150 to 200. Second point is no one here could predict or know that Israel was involved or started producing the hydrogen bomb -- the most advanced and powerful atomic bomb that can kill millions of people. And that has no justification -- no need for Israel's existence. They don't need hydrogen bomb. That was my revelation that was proved, with photos, to all of the world. That was the very important news that I brought to the world.

AMY GOODMAN: And how did you know this?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: I knew that because I worked in the place, in the building where my job was producing the materials for nuclear weapons. My job was to produce plutonium that was used for atomic bomb. I knew how much they produced every day, every year. So I could make out the amount and see exactly how many bombs can they do. I also was producing, working on other materials for the hydrogen bomb. They call it lithium-6 and tritium. I was working on these and the only use for lithium-6 is the hydrogen bomb. And I also take photos of hydrogen bomb, from another part of the building. It was not part of my job, but I succeeded to go and take photos of the hydrogen bomb. My revelation was Israel [had] started producing a neutron bomb. I succeed to take photograph of the model of the neutron bomb. This means Israel was ready to use nuclear weapons in the next war, in 1986 if it had war with Iraq, or Iran or Syria. It could use them against armies. That means the beginning by Israel using atomic bomb.... That was the most dangerous point in the Middle East: Israel, they could have used nuclear weapons like no other state there...

AMY GOODMAN: So, Mordechai Vanunu, you say that they had 150 to 200 atomic bombs, that they had developed them. That they were building a hydrogen bomb, and a neutron bomb?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And have they done that at this point? It's 18 years later.

MORDECHAI VANUNU: I don't know what they did in 18 years. We can just assume they have much more and powerful, more advanced technology, all the new computers, everything could be much more easier and help them to build much more and many more nuclear weapons. I just assume. I don't have any new information, what happened in 18 years.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe what you did at that point? You took photographs, you wanted to get the information out. How did you end up doing that? And how did you end up being captured?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: When I worked in Dimona in 1980's, I decided I was going to bring this information to the world. Because they were lying, cheating and no one predicted or knew what exactly was happening. So, all the information was in my brain. In my mind. I worked every day there, so I knew all the details. But I needed only some proof. So the proof was photos. I smuggled the camera, it was no problem to smuggle the camera there. And I took 60 photos, two films, during the time when there was no one in the control room, in the building. Night shift or Saturday shift there are less people. After that I didn't develop the films. I keep them closed because I knew that if I develop them, someone can report me to the Shin Bet. So I decided the only place I can speak to the world is from outside Israel. So decided immediately to leave Israel as soon as possible. And with the two films went on my way towards the United States. But I decided then to take them to the far east because I knew with speaking these secrets there would be danger to my life and could end my freedom. So that was then. And I also did not have much experience with the media. But on the way, I met someone who brought me to the Sunday Times. And the Sunday Times made the story. And I gave them the films, the photos. And that's how we had the Sunday Times article.

AMY GOODMAN: And how, Mordechai Vanunu, were you ultimately captured?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: When they heard, when they receive the information about what I am doing in London. Even before London they come, two agents of the Mossad come to Sydney, Australia, when I first meet Peter Hounam, the Sunday Times journalist, they started to follow me. They continued to follow me in London and tried to stop the article by all they could do. So, what they decide to do is to kidnap me. The way is to send someone to bring me to Rome, because they did not want to kidnap me in England. They sent an agent, a woman and American citizen working for some US secret organization. They used her. They convinced her to bring me to Rome. I decided that I should leave London because I knew that they followed me in London. I said I should run away from London. So after the Sunday Times published the article I decided to go with her to Rome. When we arrived to Rome, they were waiting for me in her home, and immediately they jump on me and drug me and took me by car from that home to an abandoned ditch -- where there was a yacht waiting in the sea. From the sea came a boat with some Israeli commando soldiers who took me by the commando boat to the yacht and put me on the yacht. In the yacht I asked people, who are you. And they said we are Israelis, French and British. I saw French men who speak only French, I saw Israeli men who speak English, I never saw any British. But they say there are British. There are much more involved. Many more countries involved in the kidnapping. Like, the Italian driver who drove us from the airport, the American woman, Cindy. She is not Jewish. She is not an Israeli woman. She is an American woman from Philadelphia. All these, this cartel of spies who kidnapped me was the same group also involved in the nuclear proliferation during the Cold War. They tried to [inaudible] the man who tried to reveal their nuclear proliferation to Israel and to try and stop this nuclear proliferation. So they kidnapped me and sent me back to Israel. Israel silenced me for 18 years.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you know Cindy's full name?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: No. She just used the name Cindy. But if there is any real investigation, they can go to the British airport and find the files they filled in 1986 in October. The airplane is British Airways Flight 405 to Rome. There are files that can reveal her own identity. I have the airplane ticket from London to Rome with her signature. But Israel's Shin Bet, the Mossad do not want to give it to me. They are holding it [inaudible] at the moment.

AMY GOODMAN: So you weren't suspicious of her from the beginning? Are you saying that she lured you with a physical relationship?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: I wasn't suspecting her, because I thought what they can do in Rome they can do anywhere. They should not bring me to Rome. But her task was to lure me to Rome. And I went with her to Rome.

AMY GOODMAN: So, when they captured you, you contend that they drugged you, they brought you to Israel. Talk about the famous photograph of you in the back of an Israeli vehicle with your hand up. You'd written a number on it.

MORDECHAI VANUNU: When I arrived to Israel, they told me you are not allowed to speak about the kidnapping, just secret. I was very angry. I don't accept such rule. I said the kidnapping is a crime. I have the right to speak about the crime done against me. They didn't like me to speak about this crime. So I decided to reveal it to the public. I also was worried that they are spreading lies. They tried to say that I wasn't kidnapped. I'd come back. It means if I'd come back to Israel, it means I was a spy, a Mossad spy who had revealed some secret and come back. So the kidnapping is the proof that what I said was true... So I decided to let the world know this truth. So when I had the opportunity to come to talk to public after 7 weeks in the ShinBet jail, I wrote on my palm hand, Vanunu Mordechai kidnapped in Rome. So I used the word hijacked, not kidnapping, because I didn't know English very well at the time. And then we now added to the press, I put my palm on the ground, and they saw the message. And that message destroyed another conspiracy to cheat the CIA and many [others] who didn't know the truth about how I ended up in Israel. And those spies who kidnapped me tried to save their face or their game, their spy game, by cheating the world telling them the men who kidnapped you would return. So I destroyed another cheating by the palm hand destroyed by a very big game.

AMY GOODMAN: We are talking to Mordechai Vanunu, who is speaking out for the first time on a national broadcast in the United States on Democracy Now!, the largest public media collaboration in the country. You were imprisoned for 18 years. Can you talk about your treatment in jail.

MORDECHAI VANUNU: Well, the Shabak Mossad, ShinBet Mossad were very very angry upset with my revelations. After making a mockery [of them] to all the world... They were very angry and they tried to destroy this man who made them zero in all the world. The spy organization who was respected in all the world find themselves naked. So they decided to get him to give themselves the chance to change this man to destroy him to make him ... to prove that they are still strong, this spy organization. So from the beginning they put me in total isolation for seven weeks after my kidnapping they even didn't admit I am in an Israeli prison. No one knows where I am. Only by my standing against the judge and all the Israelis who wanted to keep me in administrative arrest. I demanded I should be in trial-no administrative arrest-- so that forced them to admit I am in an Israeli prison.

Next they decided to put me in total isolation. The first two years, they keep me in a small room, filled with light 24 hours and camera inside. I couldn't sleep for two years, they tried to break my nerves. They used a lot of psychology to brainwash. I demanded to meet a priest. They give me a priest, but without able to speak to him or him speak to me, only through notes. A ShinBet man sitting near the priest, reading the notes. I'm sending him notes, they're reading them. We couldn't meet as a human being. A woman came to Israel from U.S. I had a girlfriend. She came to see me. And again they did not let us meet, they said only by notes, you cannot speak to her, touch her nothing, so I refused to this condition.

During the 11 and half years I was in total isolation alone in a cell, only for two hours everyday to go to walk in a courtyard also alone. The cell was also isolated from all the prison. I was allowed to meet my family every two weeks for a half hour. I wasn't allowed to use the phone. My mail was delayed for three months and censored. Some of it disappeared, some destroyed. The Ashkelon prison was controlled by Shabak Mossad, because they have a section inside the prison. Could you believe Shabak Mossad are sitting inside the prison hiding themselves from the people. They used the guards to control the prison so the real people who control the prison is the Shavak Mossad

AMY GOODMAN: Where is the Ashkelon Prison?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: Ashkelon prison is... about 40 miles from Tel Aviv or 20 miles from Dalia .

AMY GOODMAN: How did you maintain your sanity? You were completely isolated for how many years in solitary confinement?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: 11 years in total isolation. I decided from the first weeks that it's going to be a big war between me and the Shabak-Mossad who are now my enemy, and they will do all they can to destroy me, and I shall do all I can to survive. So I use my simple brain, and my initiative. Like if they say I cannot speak to anyone, I decided I can speak, I spoke by reading in a loud voice from the New Testament in English... I used to do a lot of psychology exercises or physical exercise, I did Yoga. I hear the BBC World Service, I hear the Voice of America. I read books, and I used to follow anything that happened to me there, anything that come by food, by letter, anything I knew. The Shabak Mossad psychologic spy are fighting me and I should follow them. That was my way, and I also use the music after five years, I started hearing opera, opera, it was very good instrument to keep the spirit very strong because you feel like you are yourself singing opera, and I used to hear a lot of opera, they send me tapes. I used to hear the opera Fidelio. That was similar to my story. I used a lot of psychology for my initiative.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Mordechai Vanunu. He is now out of jail after 18 years. Are you allowed to speak on the telephone?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: I'm allowed to use the phone, but I'm not allowed to speak to foreigners. Now when I am speaking is contrary to the restriction. But I think because I have given interview to the BBC and the day passed, nothing happened and I think - what I'm talking is about my humanity, my human rights and I think it's the government, or either a spy, who looks very stupid to fight someone who is speaking about his freedom of speech, freedom of movement, his human being, human rights. So I don't think they will be stupid [enough] to arrest me or to question. But if they can do anything - it is Israel. Israel, all of the world knows, they're [able] to do anything.

AMY GOODMAN: Mordechai Vanunu can you talk about the restrictions on you right now since you have left prison. First of all where are you?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: Since I left the prison April 21st, I took straight car from the prison to Saint George Cathedral in East Jerusalem, so I'm staying now in the Saint George Cathedral guest house. The Bishop accepted me and is expecting me to stay here, and since that day until now I'm sitting here, and the restriction is not to speak to foreigners for 6 months, that is a very stupid restriction. I can speak to any Israeli citizen about anything, but not to foreigners. And I rejected this restriction by speaking English to everyone. The other restriction is if I want to move from Jerusalem to another city, I should [notify] the police. Anywhere I want to move, I should [notify] the police. If I want to sleep in other home, I should [notify] the police. I am not allowed to go to any embassy, because they are afraid I will go ask for asylum. Another important, very danger- or important restriction is not to leave the country for one year, I'm not allowed to leave Israel for one year, they are not giving me a passport. So, those are the restrictions. We appealed to the Supreme Court. The leader of the Supreme Court followed the Shabak Mossad demand in fact they just give them another stamp. The Supreme Court again proved to be injustice, and not respecting the basics of democracy, the basics of human rights - to have the right of movement and the right of movement and the right of freedom of speech.

AMY GOODMAN: Would you like to leave Israel?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: Absolutely. I want to leave Israel after suffering seventeen and a half years in total isolation and very cruel , barbaric treatment by the Mossad Shabac inside the prison. Also because Israeli media damaged my image in all of Israel amongst the Jewish people, and some of them hate me, some of them threatened my life when I was released. Some of them are anti-Vanunu because I became a Christian, so I am not free and I am not safe in Israel. And I am demanding to leave Israel to be free... It could only happen in a free state, the United States or Europe.

AMY GOODMAN: Would you like to move to the United States?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: Yes. I would like to move to the United States. I have adopted parents in Minnesota. I have many, many friends in the United States, who used to write to me and send me letters and cards for many years during eighteen years. I read a lot of your history of United States and am very appreciative of the U.S. Constitution, U.S. freedom.

AMY GOODMAN: What date were you released from prison, Mordechai Vanunu?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: April 21.

AMY GOODMAN: So it's April 21, and now we're coming on the end of August. May, June, July, August. Four months later, why have you decided to speak out at this point? Which could well risk your having access to a telephone or - well, it's not clear what will happen now that you are violating the restrictions that have been placed upon you.

MORDECHAI VANUNU: When I came out of prison, I was ready to speak. But what happened is we met a very large riot of rightwing people, religious Jewish people who threatened my life. Then my brother was staying with me, and others say "Don't speak. Stay in the center. Don't get out. Don't have any access to the media." But I am now, since my two months of work start speaking after the BBC interview, I am ready to speak. Why does the media didn't come to me? I was ready to speak. Then I start giving my phone number and meeting people... So I am ready to speak because I used all my fight and want in seventeen and a half years in prison was the demand for freedom of speech. I believe the human being have the right to freedom of speech. I don't have any secrets. All what I'm speaking about is my view. My political view as a human has a right to express his view in any subject. That is my risk speaking again and again, as I am not speaking about secrets, because all the secrets have been published by the Sunday Times. And all what I have to say is my political view. And I have the right to speak them if Israel is a real democracy. And I hope you in the United States will support me, and support my right to freedom of speech. It does not damage Israel. I have a right to say my view, and anyone want to hear me, it's OK. If any one doesn't want to hear, they have the right to not to hear.

AMY GOODMAN: The foreign affairs and defense committee chair Yuval Steinitz of Likud party, said that you should be returned to prison or placed in administrative detention or house arrest to prevent you from revealing more of Israel's nuclear secrets. He said that you broke the law by giving an interview to the Arabic newspaper al Hayat and should be prosecuted for it. He said that it's unfortunate that the defense establishment doesn't take the committee's recommendation to place you under house arrest as was done with Marcus Klingberg who was convicted of espionage. And then you have the member of Knesset, Ophir Pines-Paz of Labor, who said you are playing with fire and continuing to hurt Israel's security, saying I don't know why this phenomenon is being treated with equanimity. He said this is a professional provocateur who's making a joke of the legal system. Your response.

MORDECHAI VANUNU: My view, there is people who make jokes is they - those who put the stupid restriction not to speak to foreigners, that I am allowed to speak to Israel, but then not allowed to speak to foreigners. If they had said I have secrets, then they should say you are not allowed to speak to anyone, not only to the foreigners. If there is danger, they should say from the beginning, "Don't speak to anyone." So they make joke from themselves, not me. Second point, Marcus Klingberg, the spy, was released from freedom before ending his sentence, so he was under restriction because he was freed five years before the end of his sentence, so they gave him this privilege to get out and to live in freedom. If they had want me, they should have done the same with me, take me out of prison five years ago. But in my case I am after seventeen and a half years in prison, served all my sentence, and I should be free and should be allowed to leave the country. And the main point is I have the right to speak my views. I'm speaking my political view, my analysis. I have not revealed any new secrets. I do not have any secrets. All that I'm saying it was repeating what have been published at least eighteen years ago.

AMY GOODMAN: You said that Israel had 100 to 200 atomic bombs and was developing a neutron and hydrogen bomb but at that point didn't have it.

MORDECHAI VANUNU: The hydrogen bomb was started to be built in 1986 or 1985. I took the photo of part of the real hydrogen bomb which was published by the Sunday Times.

AMY GOODMAN: [And Israel] had already made 100 to 200 atomic bombs?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: Yes. They used to produce about 40 kilograms of plutonium each year which is enough for 10 atomic bombs.

AMY GOODMAN: And what was your job at the Dimona plant?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: At the Dimona plant my job was producing plutonium, producing lithium-6, tritium and I also worked part-time in the nuclear waste area where they are dealing with nuclear waste. But my main job was to produce this material: plutonium, lithium, tritium.

AMY GOODMAN: And how long did you work there?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: Nine years.

AMY GOODMAN: When you spoke with your co-workers, did other people share your feelings?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: No. No one. Maybe some of them were concerned that Israel was producing nuclear weapons. But no one there doubted what was the policy. Maybe some of them in their hearts they were worried what was going on. But no one would dare to go and speak. That is the difference.

AMY GOODMAN: And who did you see at that plant? Did you see people from other countries coming through -- visitors or even working there? Or government officials, perhaps from the United States?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: No. I have no information about foreigners working there... When I worked there they brought the prime minister Shimon Peres in September 1985. In 1984 I saw... the Defense Minister. Every new prime minister and new defense minister came, the head of Mossad, the head of Shabak came to visit to see Israel's nuclear power, not foreigners. Maybe there were but I didn't know about it.

AMY GOODMAN: And how do you think Israel being a nuclear power effects the Middle East?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: My view: the nuclear weapons Israel built make it very aggressive and powerful. In 1962 Israel was ready to deal to make real peace with the Arab world after the independence war in 1948... But then I believe some people had the idea to get Israel nuclear weapons, to build the French reactor in Dimona. That power made Israel free not to make real peace with the Arabs; made Israel free not to solve the Palestinian refugee problem. ... they [took] the West Bank, Golan Heights and Sinai and keep them until now. Now Israel is much more aggressive, not to give anything to the Palestinians or to make real peace with Syria or Lebanon or Jordan or the Palestinians. So the nuclear weapon is used as a political power. Without even using nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons help Israel do what it wants without respecting international law or respecting the Middle East states... But my view is that my revelation in 1986 it prevented Israel from using nuclear weapons. Otherwise it is my view that they were ready to use nuclear weapons in their next war, it could have happened in the Cold War. My revelation let the world see what they had and made it impossible for Israel to use nuclear weapons.

AMY GOODMAN: Has Israel ever admitted that it had nuclear weapons?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: You and others can find out. I am like you, reading the newspaper, hearing the media. You and others can see what they said. Everyone in fact thinks they have, but they are playing games. My view is that they are cheating themselves. Israel continues to cheat themselves and with the United States play this cheating game -- to play like no one is watching them. The king is naked but no one wants to see the king is naked. That is the truth. And Israel is succeeding to impose on the United States and all the world to play this game.

AMY GOODMAN: Did they ever tell you at the Dimona plant not to speak about what you saw inside? AV: I signed a secret document not to speak about anything. More than that no one at Dimona were telling you that you are producing nuclear weapons. No one mentioned the word 'atomic bomb.' Some of them there don't know what they are doing --they are producing materials without knowing exactly what those materials are used for. Everything you are watching there you are not allowed to speak about.

AMY GOODMAN: if they do end up putting you back in detention, if they jailed you again, how do you feel about that?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: I would feel very bad but I will continue to demand to be a human being, to believe and to behave as a human being; to have the right to speak; the right to have freedom of speech. And I will continue to demand my total freedom to leave Israel. I hope they will not do not do such a mistake and someone -- possibly from abroad, from the United States or Europe -- will tell them that they should respect the human rights of this man. And to end this game of tricking the world by claiming there is no atomic bombs when all the world knowing exactly what they do and exactly what they saw when I gave photos to all of the world.

AMY GOODMAN: Mordechai Vanunu, do you have any regrets about what you have done?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: Well, what do you expect, if I am strong enough to survive all that they have done to me, it means that I have never regret. And much more, I all the time always was convinced and convinced that I did the right thing. That I was following my conscience and the right of the people in all the world to know such teaching and the most danger atomic bomb subject. And also when I saw the cold war ended and Russia collapse and South Africa become free and the nuclear race ended and the United States and Russia started destroying nuclear weapons from 100,000 nuclear weapons to twenty nuclear weapons, all this only was encouraging me that I did the right thing. And also I think what Israel spy Shabak did to me in prison fighting me that make it very clear that I did the right thing. I'm very happy and glad that I revealed the true face of Israel and let all the world and the Israeli people see the true face of Israel who used to remind the world "holocaust, holocaust" every hour, every day, but in fact Israel have a holocaust factory. This Jewish state was producing holocaust weapons and they have no right to speak about holocaust so I was very happy to reveal this truth.

AMY GOODMAN: Mordechai Vanunu now your life every day, are you confined to the house you are in? How do you spend your days?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: Now I'm staying in St. George Cathedral guest house in East Jerusalem, I decided not to visit the West Jerusalem, not to visit any Israel state because if I'm not allowed to leave Israel, I'm not allowed to speak to foreigners, so I too will not go see Israel. So I'm staying in East Jerusalem, walking around, going to restaurants outside, going to the old city, meeting a lot of Palestinians. Many Palestinians are happy to see me, and very - appreciate what I did, they saw me as a hero. I'm staying in St. George, doing emails, trying to learn computer, trying to read newspaper, watching TV and this summer also enjoy to go to swim - it's very good psychological treatment to swim everyday. And very happy and glad to meet human beings, I like to meet human beings, to speak and to eat with them and to be among the people. And point - the issue I want to remind you why the Shabak-Mossad will not do anything because if I am staying here in East Jerusalem among the Palestinians, those Palestinians who are recognized by Israel as the enemy, so if I have any secrets I could have passed to this enemy. So if I am staying among Palestinians for three months, four months, the Shabak-Mossad give up, they cannot expect from me anything - so what they can do? So I am staying here in East Jerusalem among Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: Mordechai Vanunu, you said that after six months they would lift the restriction on you speaking on the cell phone to foreigners and after a year you could travel. So you're only two months away from that restriction being lifted and yet you are risking a lot now by speaking on the cell phone to a foreigner. Why take that risk now?

MORDECHAI VANUNU: I don't know if they will lift the restriction after another two months, they have the right to extend them or to end them, I don't know what they will do on October 21st. Especially after the supreme court rejected my appeal now they can do anything they want, no one can say anything, they can extend them. The Supreme Court give them a blank check to do what they want so I don't know. Again, I am not risking anything because what I am telling you, I told to many Israeli people here from the left who come to see me. I said the same to the BBC that was broadcast in Israel TV. So all what I am telling you is repeating what I already said and what I already published 18 years ago. So that was the way to see it and I will not see it as risking anything. I'm only trying to bring my case to the United States to raise the awareness to my case in the United States because I have no chance here in Israel that someone will help me to get out or to receive my rights. I would like that someone in the United States to do for me - to demand my human rights. Imagine if a man like me was in another state. Imagine, or remember what the United States - when Sharansky was in Moscow. What you do, what the Congress in Washington - Senate did - to Russia for nine years when Sharansky was in prison. But when it comes to a man like me in Israel, all the Congress, Senate in Washington is ignoring me and not doing [anything] for my release, or [fighting] for my human rights. So I hope you and others can bring my case and raise the awareness to these situations and demand my human rights.

Amy Goodman is the host of Democracy Now! and author of the new book, Exception to the Rulers.

*****

The Vanunu Story

http://www.nonviolence.org/

Mordechai Vanunu, a former Israeli nuclear technician, completed his entire 18-year sentence in Israel's Ashkelon Prison on April 21, 2004, for blowing the whistle on his government's secret nuclear weapons program. Captured by Israeli agents on September 30, 1986, he spent more than 11 1/2 years in solitary confinement.

One of 11 children of Moroccan Jewish parents who emigrated to Israel in 1963, when he was 9 years old, Vanunu served in the Israeli army and then went to work as a young man in the Dimona nuclear "research center" in the Negev Desert near his home at Beersheba. The facility harbored an underground plutonium separation plant operated in strictest secrecy. As the years went by he grew increasingly troubled as he realized his work was part of Israel's nuclear bomb program. In 1985, before leaving Dimona, he took extensive photographs inside the factory in order to document the truth for his fellow citizens and the entire world.

Traveling through Asia with the film in his backpack, Vanunu made his way to Sydney, Australia, where he found companionship in an Anglican church social justice community with whom he shared the story of his nuclear background. In Sydney he also converted to Christianity and was baptized in July, 1986. A British newspaper, the London Sunday Times, learned of his story and sent a reporter to Sydney to check it out. The newspaper then flew Vanunu to England, where his photos and facts were further checked by British scientists familiar with nuclear weapons. Vanunu's story, published October 5, 1986, gave the world its first authoritative confirmation that tiny Israel had become a major nuclear weapons power, with material for as many as 200 nuclear warheads of advanced design.

Israeli agents got early wind of Vanunu's intentions. Even before publication of the story they had lured him from Britain, abducted him in Italy, and dumped his drugged body onto an Israeli cargo vessel bound for Israel. In the following months he was charged with espionage and treason and convicted at a closed-door trial. All legal appeals were exhausted, and he was consistently denied parole or probation.

For the first 11 1/2 years of his imprisonment Vanunu was held in solitary confinement, denied human contact except with his guards, a lawyer, a priest, and the occasional visits of his siblings. This treatment was condemned by Amnesty International as " cruel, inhuman, and degrading."

On March 12, 1998, he was released into the prison population but was still subject to many restrictions - no contact with Palestinian prisoners, no phone use and his mail was censored. During the last 6 years he spent in prison, Vanunu was also able to have occasional visits with Nicholas and Mary Eoloff, the St. Paul, Minnesota couple who adopted him in the fall of 1997.

Despite years of isolation in prison, Vanunu remains steadfast in his belief that what he did was necessary and right. He was released on April 21, 2004, but the Israeli government imposed severe restrictions on his movement and speech, including the condition that he is not allowed to leave the country.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel represented Vanunu in an appeal of the restrictions to the High Court. In July, the Court rejected the appeal, on the grounds that Vanunu "might be in possession of additional secrets he had not yet revealed". Vanunu continues to assert that he has no more secrets, and told everything he knew to the London Sunday Times when he blew the whistle in 1986.

At a mandated six-month review in October, 2004, the restrictions were renewed.
On November 11, 30 armed Israeli police stormed St. George's Cathedral and arrested Vanunu. (He had been given sanctuary there by the Episcopal Bishop of Jerusalem, and has been living there since his release from prison.) He was questioned about his interviews with foreign press, which he conducted in open defiance of the restrictions, believing the restrictions to be a violation of his freedom of speech. He was released late that night to a week of house arrest.

Vanunu was also detained on Christmas Eve, December 24, as he attempted to enter the off-limits West Bank city of Bethlehem for worship at the Church of the Nativity. He was released several hours later to five days of house arrest.

The next review of Mordechai Vanunu's restrictions will take place on April 21, 2005. There is continued pressure from campaigns, supporters and anti-nuclear and human rights activists around the world, urging Israel to lift the restrictions and let him go. An international delegation will go to Israel April 18-22.

Vanunu is very much looking forward to his complete freedom and the end of his long ordeal, and hopes to soon be able to leave Israel and begin a new life.

*****

Mordechai Vanunu - The Guardian profile

by Duncan Campbell

http://www.guardian.co.uk/, April 16, 2004

An imprisoned hero, a Nobel prize nominee, a victim, or a traitor: Israel's nuclear whistleblower represents many things to many people. How will he and his country react when the day of his release from jail dawns next week?

Nearly 18 years ago, a young Israeli nuclear technician went to London to reveal the secrets of his country's atomic weapons programme to the world. Then, lured to Italy by an Israeli secret service agent, he was drugged, gagged, bound and returned to Israel, where he was convicted of treason and espionage and sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment.

Next week, after serving most of that sentence in solitary confinement, he will finally be released.

Mordechai Vanunu is 49 and has become a symbol for the international peace movement. He has been nominated for a Nobel peace prize, and a long-running campaign has sought his release.

When he finally walks out of the gates of Shekma prison next Wednesday, to be met by scores of his supporters from a dozen different countries around the world, he will not be allowed to leave the country for at least six months, or communicate with any foreigner.

Born in 1954 in Marrakesh, Morocco, into a large and deeply religious Jewish family which emigrated to Israel in 1963, Vanunu served for three years in the sappers' unit of the Israeli Defence Force after he left school. He held the rank of sergeant and was given an honourable discharge. He then became a technician at the nuclear reactor centre in Dimona. He worked there from 1976 to 1985, when he was made redundant.

At the same time, he was studying philosophy at Ben Gurion university and already beginning to feel uncomfortable about a number of his government's policies.

He was also beginning to come to the attention of the authorities, not least because, along with four other Jewish students and five Arab students, he had formed a radical group, called Campus. He was also an admirer of his professor, Evron Pollakov, a radical who had refused to serve with the Israeli army in Lebanon and had been jailed as a result.

The security services noted Vanunu's increasing radicalism, his professed sympathy for the Palestinians, and the fact that he had links with an organisation called the Movement for the Advancement of Peace.

By now he was starting to suffer what he later described as a crisis of conscience while working at the Dimona plant, which was clandestinely producing nuclear weapons.

He started to take photos of the plant, without having made a decision to do anything with them. As he later explained: "It crossed my mind, of course, but I just wanted to think over my future and make plans to see more of the world."

Made redundant in 1985, he used his $7,500 payoff to travel round the world, visiting Nepal, Burma and Thailand before arriving in Australia, where he booked into a hostel in the Kings Cross district and found himself odd jobs as a hotel dishwasher and later a taxi driver. "The people are friendly," he wrote to a former girlfriend. "They drink a lot of beer."

At around this time, he introduced himself to the local church, St John's, where he was made welcome by the Rev John McKnight, who was well known in the area for his work with homeless people and drug addicts. He gradually decided to convert to Christianity, being baptised as an Anglican in 1986 - a move that was to alienate him from his parents and most of his 11 brothers and sisters.

At the church, during a discussion on peace and nuclear proliferation, Vanunu divulged some of the knowledge that he had gained at Dimona. By chance, a freelance Colombian journalist called Oscar Guerrero was working at the church. He heard about Vanunu and encouraged him to tell all.

Guerrero contacted the Australian press, but without success. He headed for Europe and approached the Sunday Times, which assigned the investigative journalist Peter Hounam and the Insight team to the story. In the summer of 1986, Hounam flew to Sydney to assess the strength of the allegation that Israel, despite its denials, was secretly developing a nuclear arsenal.

"I liked him straight away," said Hounam this week as he prepared to set off to Israel for Vanunu's release. "We spent 12 days together and he answered all my questions in a very straightforward way. He spoke about his disillusionment about what was going on in Israel."

It was agreed that Vanunu should come to London, where he could talk to nuclear scientists in the peace movement and be debriefed. Hounam continued to interview him, and the paper prepared to publish the revelations.

However, before the story had even appeared in the Sunday Times, Vanunu disappeared. He had grown frustrated with a delay in publication, and was upset by a piece in the Sunday Mirror which wrongly accused him of being a hoaxer. Crucially, he had also met a woman, "Cindy", who he believed was an American tourist. She seemed to be attracted to him, and was critical of the Israeli government.

Hounam told him: "Morde, this woman might be lying, she might be a Mossad plant," but Vanunu thought she was genuine.

"Cindy" paid for air tickets to Rome, said that her sister had a flat on the outskirts of the city, and suggested that they could have a holiday there. Vanunu believed her until the moment he entered the flat and was overpowered by two men. He was injected with a drug, smuggled on to a ship and taken back to Israel. At Mossad's headquarters, he was shown a copy of the Sunday Times story which had appeared on October 5 and told: "See the damage you have done."

Convicted of treason and espionage at a closed trial, Vanunu was jailed for 18 years. The first eleven and a half were spent in solitary confinement. There was fear for his mental health as he grew increasingly despairing. For the first part of his sentence, the light in his cell was kept on all the time.

Since being allowed to mix with other prisoners, his health has apparently improved considerably. He has read voraciously, for many years studying Kant, Sartre, Camus and Nietzsche, but more recently reading historical works, and in particular the history of the US. He listens to opera on a cassette player and hopes to travel eventually, possibly settling in Minnesota with Nick and Mary Eoloff, a couple from the peace movement who have gone through an adoption process to name him as their son.

His natural parents are still alive, but it has mainly been his two brothers, Meir, a photographer in Israel, and Asher, the deputy head of a high school there, who have supported him during his long incarceration.

"It's a terrible tragedy," said Hounam. "I've been waiting since 1986 for this moment. I want him to be able to resume his life, maybe get married and have kids. It's been a scandal what has happened to him."

Although denounced as a traitor by his government and the subject of frequent allegations about his motives in some of the Israeli press, his actions have won him international support.

Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon papers in an attempt to end the war in Vietnam in the 70s, has described Vanunu as "heroic" and often refers to him as such in his public speeches.

Sabby Sagall, one of the founding members of the London-based Campaign to Free Vanunu and for a Nuclear Free Middle East, said: "He is one of the bravest and most inspirational people of our time. If Bush and Blair want to find weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, Vanunu has told them where to go."

Professor Joseph Rotblat, a Nobel peace prize winner, has also been outspoken in his support.

Among those flying to Israel this weekend are Bruce Kent, vice-president of CND, and the actor Susannah York.

Ernest Rodker, the secretary of the campaign, said: "He is in some physical danger if he remains in Israel. A talkshow host called for him to be wiped out recently."

Rodker said that Vanunu had a wide range of correspondents who had kept in touch with him over the years. He hoped that, if Vanunu wanted to come to Britain, he would be allowed to do so - Britain had a responsibility towards him because he was in effect lured away while on British soil. It was believed at the time that Vanunu was not seized in Britain because the Israeli government did not want to embarrass Mrs Thatcher.

Over the years, pleas for his release or for a less harsh jail regime met with little response. The Israeli government position was made clear in 1997 when President Ezer Weizman said at a press conference in London: "He was a spy who gave away secrets, and the fact that he did so for conviction rather than for money makes no difference. He was a traitor to his country."

In one of the hundreds of letters that Vanunu wrote in prison, he said he saw himself as a free man.

"I'll stay free, to prove that I was right to reveal the madness of the Israeli nuclear secrets. I am not a spy, but a man who helped all the world to end the madness of the nuclear race."

Life in short

Born: October 13 1954, Morocco

Life

1963: family emigrates to Israel 1971-74: military service in army 1976-1985: technician at Dimona nuclear reactor centre.

Travels in far east before arriving in London to talk to Sunday Times

September 1986: disappears.

October 1986: Sunday Times publishes his story.

November 1986: Israel admits it has him in custody.

March 1988: convicted of treason and sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment.

Vanunu on impending release

"I'll be free, I won. The gates and the locks will be opened. They didn't succeed in breaking me or driving me crazy."

Vanunu on future

"I have no interest in fighting the state. I want to live a normal life, a simple life, as a free man outside of Israel"

*****

Vanunu

by Robert Fisk

http://www.zmag.org/, March 26, 2004

Any Israeli who bought the 16 February edition of the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth would have believed that a truly wicked man was about to be released from Ashkelon prison. Each time a suicide bomber blew himself up, the prisoner would celebrate. Worse still, said the paper, the inmate--once a keeper of Israel's nuclear secrets--wants to endanger his country further after his release. "He told me," a former prisoner was quoted as saying, "that he has additional material and that he will reveal secrets..."

Should it be a surprise, then, that the very same prisoner, supposedly celebrating the slaughter of innocents while preparing to betray his country yet again, holds a clutch of awards from European peace groups, the Sean McBride Peace prize and an honorary doctorate from the University of Tromso? In 2000, the Church of Humanism told him: "You are honest, courageous and morally highly motivated, and may the great sacrifice you have made serve to protect not only those living in Israel but all the peoples of the Middle East and perhaps the world." The same man has also been put forward as a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mordechai Vanunu, it seems, can only be loved or loathed. Indifference to the former Israeli nuclear technician is impossible. For he is the man who, in 1986, took evidence to The Sunday Times of the full story behind Israel's secret nuclear weapons plant at Dimona in the Negev desert, complete with the total number of advanced fission bombs there--200 at the time--and, even more disturbingly, complete with pictures. He said that Israel had mastered a thermonuclear design and appeared to have a number of thermonuclear bombs ready for use. He was subsequently lured by a girl from London to Rome and then kidnapped, drugged and freighted back to Israel by Israeli secret policemen. But in just six weeks' time, after 18 years of imprisonment--12 of them in solitary confinement--the world's most famous whistleblower is scheduled for release. Israel--not to mention the world--is holding its breath.

Will he divulge further secrets of Dimona--always supposing he has any after 18 years of incarceration--or curse the country of which he is a citizen, albeit a citizen who converted to Christianity before his arrest and who wants to emigrate to the United States? Will he emerge a cowed man, anxious only to apologise for the terrible betrayal he inflicted upon his country? Or will he, as his friends and supporters and his adopted American parents hope, become an apostle of peace, one of the greatest of this generation's prisoners of conscience, the man who tried to rid the world of the threat of nuclear annihilation?

The Israeli government is still uncertain how to confront Vanunu's release on 21 April. They are known to be considering--perhaps have already decided upon--"certain supervisory means" and "appropriate measures" to shut Vanunu up. In the second half of January, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met with Menachem Mazuz, Israel's attorney general, and the defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, and discussed whether Vanunu should be refused a passport. Vanunu would be free to sunbathe on the beaches of Tel Aviv but could not tour the world advertising Israel's nuclear power. It's a sign of how fearful the Israeli administration has become at the prospect of this one man's release that Sharon also summoned to this conference Yehiel Horev's so-called "Defence Ministry Security Unit", the country's internal and external intelligence services--Shin Beth and the equally overestimated Mossad--and a representative of the Israeli Atomic Energy Committee.

Horev, it is now known, wanted to go much further than Sharon. He proposed clapping an administrative detention order on Vanunu--Israel's usual way of dealing with Palestinians whom they regard as "terrorists"--although the meeting apparently came to the conclusion that this would only enhance Vanunu's reputation as a martyr for world peace. There's another way of shutting Vanunu up, of course. He can be publicly freed and then--the moment he starts talking about his work as a nuclear technician--he can be tried again and thrown back into Ashkelon jail--or Shikma prison, as the Israelis call it now.

But the real problem that Vanunu represents is that he will remind the world at a critically important moment in the history of the Middle East that Israel is a nuclear power and that its warheads stand ready to be fired from the Negev desert. He will also remind the world that the Americans, despite battering their way into Iraq to destroy Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, continue to give their political, moral and economic support to a country that has secretly amassed a treasure trove of weapons of mass destruction.

How can President Bush remain silent on Israel's nuclear power when he has not only illegally invaded an Arab state for allegedly harbouring nuclear weapons and condemned Iran for the same ambitions, but also praised--along with Tony Blair's government--Colonel Gaddafi of Libya for abandoning his nuclear pretensions? If the Arab states are being "defanged"--always supposing they had any real fangs in the first place--why should Israel not be "de-nuclearised"? Why can't the United States apply the same standards to Israel as it does to the Arabs? Or why, for that matter, can't Israel apply the same standards to itself that it demands of its Arab enemies?

This is the debate that the Israeli and the American governments wish to stifle. In the United States, where any discussion of the Israeli-American relationship that deviates from the benign is routinely condemned as subversive or "anti-Semitic", discussion of Israel's nuclear power is not something that Washington will want to hear on the Sunday talk shows. Vanunu, it should be said at once, is well aware of all this, of his own importance--infinitely greater than it was when he was a mere junior technician at Dimona--and of the role that tens of thousands of anti- nuclear campaigners expect him to play in the world. Many times, through friends and through his own brothers, Vanunu has said that he has no new nuclear secrets but has the right to oppose nuclear weapons in Israel or anywhere else. "All I want to do is to go to America, get married and start a new life," he says.

No one can doubt Vanunu's conviction. Born in 1954 to a religious Jewish family in Morocco, he immigrated to Israel at the age of nine, performed his military service in the mid-Seventies and began work at Dimona in November 1976 while completing a graduate course in philosophy and geography. Perhaps it was during his travels in Thailand, Burma, Nepal and Australia in early 1986 that he decided he had a moral duty to talk about Israel's nuclear weapons. In the same year, he was baptised at an Anglican church in Sydney. Vanunu had clearly become deeply distressed at Israel's growing nuclear power when he walked into British newspaper offices in September of 1986 in the hope of telling the world the truth about Dimona. He had dropped by Robert Maxwell's Daily Mirror at first, handed over his photographs of the nuclear plant and waited for a reply. Unknown to Vanunu, Maxwell sent the pictures round to the Israeli embassy in London to "take a look at them", supposedly to "confirm" whether or not the story was true. It seems likely that Maxwell had motives other than journalistic integrity in this betrayal of Vanunu. After his death at sea in 1991, Maxwell, who had stolen millions in pensioners' funds, was given a state funeral in Israel at which Shimon Peres praised his "services" to the state.

Maxwell's Daily Mirror ran a "spoiler" story on 28 September, belittling Vanunu and carrying the headline "The Strange Case of Israel and the Nuclear Con Man." The Sunday Times ran with the full story--but Vanunu had already disappeared. Entrapped by a female Mossad agent, he had been lured on to a British Airways flight to Rome and promptly kidnapped. It seems, in fact, that he was seized inside Rome's Fiumicino Airport. Unable to speak to journalists, he carefully wrote out details of his movements on the palm of his hand and pressed it to the window of his prison truck as it took him to court. "Rome ITL 30:9:86 2100 came to Rome by BA504," he had written. He had been kidnapped at 9pm on 30 September at Rome International. Were the Italian authorities involved in his kidnap? Were they present when he was seized? Perhaps Vanunu can tell us.

He is certainly a man of endurance. Once, during his 12 years of solitary, the prison authorities accidentally freed him for exercise before Arab prisoners in the jail-yard had been returned to their cells. Vanunu immediately walked towards them. One of the Arabs, a Lebanese imprisoned for smuggling arms into the West Bank, was among the first strangers to bring word of Vanunu's appearance to the outside world. "Vanunu fell into step with us and smiled at us and it was a time before we realised who he was," the freed Lebanese later told The Independent. "He said it was good to be with us and we thought he was a brave man. Then the guards realised their mistake and we were pushed and shoved away from him, back to our cells."

An Israeli journalist visiting another prisoner was amazed to see Vanunu. "For a short moment I saw a bucolic scene," he wrote, "as if taken from some other reality: a serene man, sitting on a bench in a garden and reading Nietzsche in English. I approached him and extended my hand. Pleased to meet you, my name is Ronen,' I said. I'm Motti,' the most confined prisoner in the State of Israel replied. Before we could continue to talk, screaming wardens rushed over and grabbed him away."

A former prisoner, Yossi Harush, has provided another glimpse of the imprisoned Vanunu in the years after his solitary confinement ended. "During the day," Harush told Yedioth Ahronoth, "during walks, he meets people and talks with them. I spoke a lot with Vanunu. We were friends. He would come to my cell... He has good conditions. He is treated nicely in prison... He has no restrictions on leaving his cell, but he is restricted within the prison. I myself, as a working prisoner, painted a red line that he is forbidden to cross. I was ordered to do that, and afterwards our relationship cooled off."

Vanunu has been regularly visited by an Anglican clergyman, Dean Michael Sellors. It was Sellors who pointed out to him that his release date coincided with the Queen's birthday. "He said that in that case, he'd better get a ticket and greet her himself."

Vanunu has also taken heart in the actions of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, a normally conservative organisation, which has stated that, "any sanctions against Mordechai after release would be illegal and immoral." A chatline on the Hebrew website of the Israeli daily Maariv shows that a number of young Israelis regard Vanunu as a hero rather than a threat. Mary Eoloff, a retired American school teacher who, with her husband, adopted Vanunu in the hope that he could be given US citizenship and released, was the first to reveal that when Israeli security men offered to release him a year before the expiry of his 18 years in jail, Vanunu turned them down. "He believes in freedom of speech," she said.

It remains to be seen if Israel will allow Vanunu the free speech he loves. Horev, the defence ministry security official who attended Sharon's meeting, has spoken of the threat that he believes the nuclear technician represents, which seems to be about ambiguity rather than state secrets. Horev compares this ambiguity to water in a glass. "My job is to ensure that the water doesn't spill over the glass," he said recently. "Up until the Vanunu affair, the water was at a very low level. The affair caused the water level to rise significantly and caused Israel great damage, but the water still didn't overflow. If we let certain people act in the matter, the water will spill."

The Israeli journalist Raanan Shaked was a good deal more cynical when he spoke on the subject on Israel's Channel 10 TV. "Who is the main threat to Israel?" he asked. "Of course, Mordechai Vanunu! He is the big danger. Israeli democracy simply cannot withstand the impact of this one man saying what every child knows: we have nuclear weapons."

On 21 April, when Vanunu is released, we shall find out if the water is going to overflow--and whether Vanunu will cross the red line painted so ominously on the floor at the instruction of the authorities.

*****

Vanunu Speaks

Israeli Nuclear Whistleblower Risks Jail to Talk Exclusively to AFP

by Christopher Bollyn

www.americanfreepress.net/2004

Mordechai Vanunu, Israel's most famous dissident free after 18 years in prison, is ready to defy the severe restrictions imposed upon him by the Israeli military and tell the western media everything he knows about the Middle East's largest secret arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. However, because the hidden stockpiles belong to Israel, no American news outlet is interested in discussing this, except American Free Press.

"I have sacrificed my freedom and risked my life in order to expose the danger of nuclear weapons, which threaten this whole region," Vanunu said in an exclusive interview with American Free Press on July 28 [2004].

Vanunu spent 18 years in an Israeli prison-11 and a half of them in solitary confinement-for providing evidence of Israel's nuclear arsenal to a British newspaper in 1986. "I acted on behalf of all citizens and all of humanity," said Vanunu.

In October 1986, Vanunu, a nuclear technician who had worked at the Dimona Nuclear Power Plant in the Negev Desert for 10 years, traveled to London and gave photographic evidence to The Sunday Times that Israel was secretly developing nuclear weapons. Two months earlier he had converted to Christianity while traveling in Australia.

After having learned about the secret production of plutonium for nuclear weapons at Dimona, in 1985 Vanunu believed it was his responsibility to inform the citizens of the world that an arsenal of nuclear weapons was being created in Israel.

Vanunu provided evidence and described how Israel had built an arsenal of over 200 nuclear bombs and neutron bombs. Before The Times's story was even published, however, Vanunu had been lured to Rome and kidnapped by Israeli secret service agents. A secret trial followed, and Vanunu was locked in a tiny, windowless cell for more than a decade.

When Vanunu was released from an Israeli prison on April 21, the Israeli military authorities imposed severe restrictions on his freedom. He is banned from leaving the country, confined to an assigned residence and denied the right to be in contact with journalists or foreigners.

The human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) protested the restrictions imposed on Vanunu saying on April 19: "Vanunu must not be subject to arbitrary restrictions and violations of his fundamental rights on the basis of pretexts or suspicions about what he may do in the future."

The restrictions on Vanunu's movement, speech and association violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Israel has ratified and is obliged to uphold, according to AI.

While Israeli officials contend the restrictions are to prevent Vanunu from divulging information about Israel's nuclear arsenal, AI sees it differently:

"Israel's determination to curtail Vanunu's freedom and contact with the outside world seem to be intended to prevent him from revealing details of his abduction by Israeli secret service agents 18 years ago in Rome in what was clearly an unlawful act," AI said.

According to Jonathan Cook of The Guardian in Britain, Vanunu's brother, Meir, who lives with him at St. George's, says there is another motive for the restrictions and confinement of Israel's most famous dissident: Vanunu's release brings attention to Israel's nuclear arsenal at precisely the moment when the justification for attacking Saddam Hussein's Iraq-his possession of weapons of mass destruction-is shown to have been hollow.

"If Vanunu were free to talk, he might remind the world that the greatest threat to Middle East peace comes not from Baghdad but from Tel Aviv," Cook wrote. "That is a message neither America nor Britain wants to hear right now."

The same controlled U.S. media networks that sent embedded reporters into combat in Iraq and published false reports about that nation's alleged weapons of mass destruction, are seemingly afraid to go to St. George's Cathedral in East Jerusalem and interview Vanunu, Israel's most famous dissident and peace activist, for fear of crossing a line drawn by the Israeli military.

American Free Press, however, and the London-based Arabic language newspaper Al Hayat have interviewed Vanunu recently from St. George's, where he has sought asylum in the Anglican church compound a short distance from the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem.

BEHIND THE JFK ASSASSINATION

Comments made by Vanunu during an interview with Al Hayat's weekly magazine Al Wassat, published on July 25, made headlines around the world but were completely ignored in the United States, where they could have caused immense political damage to Israel. As The Jerusalem Post's article headline read, "Vanunu: Israel behind JFK assassination."

Russia's Pravda article of July 27 began: "Israel may be implicated in the biggest crime of the past century, which took place in Dallas in 1963."

Iran's Tehran Times, writing from Jerusalem, said: "In a startling accusation, nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu has alleged that Jerusalem was behind the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who was exerting pressure on the then Israeli head of state to shed light on the Dimona nuclear plant."

Similar articles appeared in newspapers around the world, but in the United States this explosive news was only reported by wire services and in Jewish newspapers.

Vanunu's comments that there are "near-certain indications" that Israel was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy support the thesis of Michael Collins Piper, presented in his book Final Judgment, that Israeli agents played a key role in the murder.

AFP asked Vanunu to explain his comments about Israeli involvement in the murder of President Kennedy.

"My view is that Kennedy was assassinated because of his strong opposition to [Israeli prime minister] Ben Gurion," Vanunu said.

At the time, Ben Gurion was working to create a nuclear arsenal for Israel.

The group that was involved with Ben Gurion in developing and protecting Israel's nuclear arsenal "was behind the assassination of Kennedy," Vanunu said.

As Piper documents in Final Judgment, Kennedy's resistance to Israel becoming a nuclear-armed state led to increasing hostility between the two leaders until Ben Gurion resigned in June 1963. Kennedy had realized that the Israelis were producing illegal nuclear weapons from the nuclear reactor given to Israel in 1959 under the "Atoms for Peace" program.

In the Al Wassat interview, Vanunu said: "Israel possesses between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons, including a neutron bomb and hydrogen bombs, which are tenfold in their effect. If an atomic bomb can kill 100,000 people then the hydrogen bomb can kill a million.

"We do not know which irresponsible Israeli prime minister will take office and decide to use nuclear weapons in the struggle against neighboring Arab countries," The Jerusalem Post reported Vanunu having said. "What has already been exposed about the weapons Israel is holding [is that they] can destroy the region and kill millions."

A 'SECOND CHERNOBYL'

Vanunu also warned of the environmental dangers of nuclear leaks at Israel's antiquated nuclear facility at Dimona. An earthquake or nuclear accident at Dimona could result in the "leaking of nuclear radiation, threatening millions of people in neighboring countries," Vanunu said.

Jordan, in particular, was mentioned as being in danger of nuclear contamination. "Dimona's chimneys do not operate unless the winds blow in the direction of Jordan," Vanunu said.

A Jordanian government spokesman, Asma Khader, responded promptly to Vanunu's claim, saying, "The kingdom is free of radiation."

Vanunu also criticized the recent visit to Israel of Mohamed El Baradei, head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

"I am very disappointed by Mr. El Baradei because I expected him to go and inspect the Dimona reactor," Vanunu said. "The job of Mr. Baradei is to go and see if what I said . . . if it's true."

Vanunu stressed to AFP his strong desire to speak with the media despite the restrictions, and provide them with information and his views on the need for peace-and a nuclear-free Middle East.

Asked if the U.S. media was interested in meeting him, Vanunu said "not one" American or British newspaper or television network had visited him at St. George's since his release from prison.

"Why are they in silence?" Vanunu asked AFP about the U.S. media. "Why is the press not coming to see me? The media should bring my case to the people and the politicians. This case must be heard."

Linda Rothstein, editor of the Chicago-based Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, however, showed little interest in Vanunu's story, saying that Vanunu has his supporters and that the Bulletin is not an advocacy group.

Likewise, Kay Seok of Human Rights Watch said that there was nothing they could do. "Nobody at HRW is working on Israel right now," she said.

WANTS OUT OF ISRAEL

Vanunu desperately wants to leave Israel, where he is viewed as a traitor, and seek political asylum in the United States. Nick and Mary Eoloff of St. Paul, Minnesota, have formally adopted Vanunu and are ready to provide him sanctuary.

Mrs. Eoloff told AFP that Vanunu's life is in danger in Israel.

"I want to go abroad and start my life as a free man," Vanunu said after Israel's high court upheld the military's restrictions on his movement and freedom. "If Israel is a democracy, it should allow me to do it."

Asked if he had been tortured during his 18 years in prison, Vanunu said, "Of course."

He said he had been subjected to "mental and psychological torture" that was "cruel and barbaric."

Because he had converted to Christianity he had received worse treatment than Jewish prisoners, he said. Vanunu said he had been treated like a Palestinian and that his captors had tried to "destroy" him.

"I am a symbol of the will of freedom," he said. "You cannot break the human spirit."

Asked about his supporters in the United States, Vanunu said: "I need their support to get me out. Americans should raise their voices with their congressmen and ask them in a loud voice to visit me and bring attention to my case.

"My country is not Israel," Vanunu said. "I want to be free and to leave Israel."

"Israel does not respect my basic human rights," Vanunu said. "I am denied the freedom of movement and freedom of speech-like all Palestinians. I want peace and freedom from all nuclear weapons in the Middle East."

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