Vananu an Israeli traitor, says Israel

Mordechai Vanunu betrayed his country by spilling its nuclear secrets and restrictions imposed on him upon his release from prison are justified, Shimon Peres, the founder of Israel’s nuclear programme, said today.

Vanunu, aged 50, a former nuclear technician whose 18-year term for treason ends tomorrow, will not be able to travel abroad for at least a year, speak with foreigners or approach Israeli ports or borders.

He will also be barred from discussing his work at Israel’s Dimona reactor.

Vanunu was given a map of Israel marking the areas off-limits to him, the Defence Ministry said.

Vanunu’s brother, Meir, said Vanunu will live in a luxury apartment complex in Jaffa, an old seaport and today part of Tel Aviv.

Jaffa has both Arab and Jewish residents, and Vanunu’s apartment will be near several churches.

Vanunu, who was raised as an ultra-Orthodox Jew, converted to Christianity in the mid-1980s.

In anticipation of Vanunu’s release, anti-nuclear campaigners from around the world were heading to Shikma Prison in the Israeli coastal town of Ashkelon.

The activists, including British actress Susannah York, Irish Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairaed Maguire and British Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, were to assemble outside the prison gates later today.

Vanunu has been embraced as a hero by the anti-nuclear movement. He has repeatedly been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and was legally adopted by an US couple who thought mistakenly that this would gain him US citizenship.

In 1986, Vanunu leaked details and pictures of Israel’s alleged nuclear weapons program to The Sunday Times and was abducted to Israel by the Mossad secret service.

He was convicted of espionage and treason in a closed-door trial in Jerusalem. Much of his 18-year sentence was spent in solitary confinement.

Vanunu has told the Shin Bet security service that he has no more secrets to reveal.

However, Israel officials allege that Vanunu still poses a danger, and have imposed a series of restrictions on his movement.

Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz told Israel Army Radio that Vanunu “was convicted of aiding the enemy and in effect betraying his country and it is Israel’s duty as a democratic state to take precautionary steps regarding its security”.

Peres, who in the 1950s and 1960s took the lead in establishing Israel’s nuclear programme, also defended the restrictions.

“Vanunu violated norms and betrayed his country,” Peres, the Israeli opposition leader and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, told Army Radio. “This is justice.”

The London-based human rights group Amnesty International said the restrictions violate Vanunu’s rights.

“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 the future,” Amnesty International said in a statement.