Nearly 20 years and Vanunu still taunts Israel

[General Duke]

Vanunu taunts Israel ahead of his release

By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem

20 April 2004

 

 

An Israeli who revealed that his country was developing nuclear weapons has repeated his demand that they should be destroyed, just as he is due to be released from jail.

 

Mordechai Vanunu startled the world with claims in 1986 that the Israelis' Dimona nuclear power plant, where he worked, has churned out hundreds of warheads.

 

Five days before The Sunday Times published his claims Mr Vanunu was captured by Israeli secret agents. Subsequently found guilty of espionage, his case became a cause célèbre for anti-nuclear campaigners.

 

More than 100 well wishers, including Bruce Kent, the vice-president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the actress Susannah York, and the Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Colin Breed, will be on hand to greet him when he leaves jail tomorrow.

 

In a taped interview broadcast in Israel last night he repeated his claim that the Dimona should be destroyed and compared it to the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq that Israel bombed in 1981.

 

The tape of the interview with two intelligence agents, in which Mr Vanunu denies he betrayed his country, or that he has fresh secrets to reveal, was recorded several weeks ago and leaked by an Israeli official to a television network apparently in the hope of increasing his unpopularity among Israelis.

 

Attempts were made by Mr Vanunu's lawyers to stop the broadcast on the grounds that it was an unethical use of an intelligence interrogation.

 

According to transcripts published in two Israeli newspapers yesterday Mr Vanunu said in the interview that the United States and Europe know everything they need to know about Israel's nuclear program. Mr Vannu said: "As for myself, I just want to repeat the things I already said and that were published."

 

The transcripts quote Mr Vanunu as suggesting that the Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet will have difficulty monitoring him and that he will have a computer once he is out of jail.

 

Mr Vanunu said he hoped the debate over Israel's nuclear program - the existence of which has never been officially admitted by Israel - would be revived, and that he was disappointed that Israel hadn't come under greater pressure to dismantle Dimona. "I want them to take the reactor, more than that, I want them to destroy the reactor, as they destroyed the reactor in Iraq," he added.

 

After his release, Mr Vanunu will be prevented from travelling abroad for a year and, for at least six months, he will not be allowed to contact foreigners, enter foreign embassies or approach border crossings. He has been ordered not to discuss his work at the nuclear reactor or the circumstances of his capture.

 

Mr Vanunu plans to appeal to the Supreme Court if the restrictions are not rescinded.

 

The journalist Uri Dan, a long time associate of Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister, supported the restrictions on Mr Vanunu and said he should be "treated as a traitor. He is a traitor".

 

Accusing Mr Vanunu of having acted out of "greed", Mr Dan said: "Only in our generous, human rights loving country is a zero like this a hero in the eyes of some politicians, manipulators and journalists."