Israel Smears Vananu Before Prison Release

by Ferry Biedermann

(IPS) -- A disparate group of demonstrators and international media representatives welcomed Israel's nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu Wednesday upon his release from prison after completing his 18-year sentence.

Supporters, international anti-nuclear weapons campaigners and also irate Israelis to whom he is still a traitor had gathered outside Shikma prison in the southern coastal town of Ashkalon.

Despite severe restrictions clamped upon him by Israel's security establishment even after his release, Vanunu immediately spoke out against the state, and made clear he intends to pursue his campaign against Israel's weapons of mass destruction.

"Israel doesn't need nuclear arms, especially now that all the Middle East is free from nuclear weapons," he said at an impromptu press conference outside the prison. Dressed in a simple white shirt and black tie, Vanunu looked neither villain nor hero.

He called on the government to open up the main nuclear facility at Dimona in the Negev desert to international inspections. Vanunu had worked as a technician at Dimona for about a decade from the mid-1970s until 1985.

In 1986 he made headlines around the world when his story was published as a major scoop in the British newspaper The Sunday Times. Vanunu provided the newspaper in London with pictures of the inside of the reactor at Dimona and of the nuclear facilities used for the production of bombs.

Israel had widely been assumed to be a nuclear power before then, but Vanunu was the first to provide details of the program. Based on his information experts deduced that the country possessed some 200 warheads. That estimate was recently lowered by U.S. intelligence to some 80.

Israel has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and therefore does not have to submit to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The Dimona reactor was built in the late 1950s and early 1960s by the French, who also provided the first shipment of uranium.

Vanunu's supporters have always maintained that he acted on principle and that he believed the world should be informed about Israel's nuclear arsenal. He was reportedly to be paid $100,000 by the Sunday Times for his story.

He never collected the money because even before the story was published he was seduced by a female agent of Israel's Mossad secret service and lured to Rome. There he was drugged and taken to Israel where he was put on trial for treason.

This story too made headlines around the world, and in one famous photograph Vanunu managed to convey the facts about his kidnapping by writing them on his hand and holding it up at the window of a van taking him from prison to the courtroom. After that he was held virtually incommunicado, and he was led to the courtroom in handcuffs and with a helmet on.

Vanunu was held in solitary confinement for more than 11 years of his sentence. A friend of his from Sydney, Father David Smith, said that after that period he was "a wreck, both mentally and physically."

Vanunu said after his release that he had been held in "cruel and barbaric" conditions. But he said he did not regret what he had done. "You didn't succeed in breaking me. You didn't succeed in making me crazy. I am ready to start my new life."

He will continue to face tough restrictions imposed on him by the authorities who hold that he still has secrets that can harm Israel's security.

Vanunu will not be allowed to travel abroad for at least one year, he may not even get close to border facilities, ports and airports. He wants to settle in the United States where he has been adopted by an elderly couple while he was in jail.

Among the restrictions on him are a ban on talking to foreigners without permission from authorities. He is not allowed even to participate in Internet chat without permission.

Vanunu says he has no additional information that could harm Israel, nor does he intend to harm the state.

Labour leader and former prime minister Shimon Peres, the architect of Israel's nuclear weapons program, defended the restrictions. He said Vanunu was simply a traitor who "violated the norms and betrayed his country." The majority of the Israelis support their country's weapons program.

In the run-up to his release, the authorities seemingly tried to smear Vanunu by releasing what was described as a secretly recorded conversation in which Vanunu said he saw no need for a Jewish state, and that Judaism and Islam were backward religions.

After his release Vanunu said these statements attributed to him were false and taken out of context.

He also said that he was treated worse than others by the authorities because he was a Christian. Vanunu was born into a traditional Jewish Moroccan family but converted in Australia in 1986 after leaving Israel and his job at the nuclear reactor.

His first stop after his release from prison was St. George Cathedral in Jerusalem, the seat of the Anglican Bishop. The Bishop led a service for Vanunu inside the cathedral.