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Mordechai Vanunu (born October 13, 1954) is a former Israeli nuclear technician who publicly exposed Israel's possession of nuclear weapons. When Israel learned of this, he was kidnapped by Mossad (although upon release Vanunu claimed it was the CIA), tried in secret, convicted of treason, and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Vanunu was released from prison on April 21, 2004, and is subject to a broad array of speech and travel restrictions.
Vanunu was seen by many human rights groups as a prisoner of conscience. Amnesty International described his treatment as constituting "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment [...] such as is prohibited by international law." Vanunu has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize every year from 1988 to 2004; however, the Israeli government considers him a traitor.
Vanunu was born in Marrakech, Morocco to a Jewish family. He had 11 brothers and sisters, and emigrated 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. There he became increasingly troubled about the Israeli nuclear 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 in Sydney, Vanunu lived in a hostel in the Kings Cross and worked odd jobs, first as a odd jobs as a hotel dishwasher and later a taxi driver.
Vanunu also began to come to 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. This isolated him from his family. While still in Sydney, he met with Peter Hounam, a journalist from the Sunday Times.
In early September 1986, Vanunu flew to London with Hounam, and revealed to the Sunday Times his knowledge of the Israeli nuclear program, including photographs he had secretly taken at the Dimona site. On September 30, 1986, an American Mossad agent, Cheryl Bentov, operating under the name of "Cindy" and masquerading as an American tourist, persuaded Vanunu to fly to Rome with her on a holiday. Once in Rome, Mossad agents kidnapped and drugged him, and returned him to Israel on a freighter. That marked the beginning of what was to be more than a decade of solitary confinement in Israeli prisons.
Shortly after his kidnapping, on October 5, the 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 was held in secret, at the District Court in Jerusalem, before Chief Justice Eliahu Noam and judges Zvi Tal and Shalom Brener, and he was not permitted contact with the media — however, he cleverly managed to reveal to them the date and location of his kidnapping, by means of writing it on the palm of his hand which he held against the window of a van while being transported so that awaiting journalists could get the information. This act caused Israel's standard procedures for transporting prisoners to be changed to prevent it from happening again.
On February 27, 1988, the Israeli court sentenced him to 18 years imprisonment from the date of his capture.
The Israeli government kept him in near total isolation for more than 11 years, allegedly afraid that he might reveal more Israeli nuclear secrets. However, many critics argue that Vanunu does not have any 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, has said:
His last appeal against his conviction, to the Israeli Supreme Court in 1990, failed. The Israeli government refused to release the transcript of the court case until, after the threat of legal action, it finally agreed to let censored extracts be published in Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israeli newspaper, in late 1999.
The European Parliament has condemned Israel's treatment of Vanunu, and referred to his kidnapping by Mossad agents as a gross violation of Italian sovereignty and international law.
Vanunu was given an honorary doctorate at the University of Tromsø in 2001.
Vanunu and the story of Israel's nuclear secrets were the subjects of Israel's Secret Weapon, a BBC Correspondent television program. It was broadcast on BBC2 in the UK on March 17, 2003. Vanunu remains bitter about the whole incident, but has stated that he has has no regrets. 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.
On February 5, 2004, former Mossad director Shabtai Shavit told Reuters that the option of killing Vanunu was considered in 1986 but "Jews don't do that to other Jews."
Upon his release, Vanunu claimed he had no further secrets to reveal, and indicated a desire to completely dissociate himself from Israel: He refused to speak in Hebrew, and expressed a desire to move to the United States as soon as the Israeli government would permit him to do so.
Although Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Israel has ratified and is obliged to uphold, stipulates that:
"Everyone lawfully within the territory of a State shall, within that territory, have the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his residence"
and
"Everyone shall be free to leave any country, including his own."
and despite the fact that the rights to freedom of expression and association are guaranteed by Articles 19 and 21 of the same Covenant, a number of restrictions have been placed upon Vanunu by Israeli authorities, who stated their reason was fear of him spreading further state secrets). These stipulate that:
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.
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.
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