SECRET AGENTS STOP PAROLE FOR VANUNU
from the Sunday Times, December 1, 2002
The Israeli security services have blocked attempts to obtain an
early release for Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli technician imprisoned
in 1986 after revealing the secrets of his country's nuclear weapons
programme to The Sunday Times.
Vanunu attended a parole hearing last Sunday with hopes of going free
after an officer from Shin Beth, Israel's internal secret service,
visited him in jail two months ago. The officer told Vanunu, whose
sentence runs until 2004, to start packing his belongings as the
service did not intend to contest his application for parole.
However, when the hearing began in a special security court inside
Beersheba prison, representatives of Shin Beth and two other security
services testified that Vanunu might still possess vital nuclear
secrets, even after 16 years in jail.
They also claimed to be fearful that he might reveal embarrassing
details of his capture: he was seized by a team of Mossad agents who
lured him to Rome in an elaborate honey trap.
Ernest Rodker, of the British-based Campaign to Free Vanunu,
described the official objections to his release as cruel and
inhuman. "It is an incredible situation that someone can be kept in
prison because they might reveal information about their own violent
kidnapping," he said.
The hearing was adjourned until December 31 after new evidence was
submitted by the secret services. When the court reconvenes, Avigdor
Feldman, Vanunu's lawyer, will argue that Vanunu disclosed everything
he knew about the Dimona nuclear plant to The Sunday Times before he
was abducted.
He also plans to renew an attempt to subpoena Shimon Peres, who was
Israel's prime minister at the time. Peres gave an extensive
interview to Israeli television last year in which he boasted that he
had helped to mastermind the nuclear programme with the assistance of
the French.
Feldman said yesterday that Vanunu had no more damaging nuclear
secrets to reveal and it was wrong to argue he should be kept locked
up because he knew details of how he was brought to Israel.
The Campaign to Free Vanunu in London lobbies for his release and
holds a vigil near the capital's Israeli embassy every Saturday
morning.
by Peter Hounam, Jerusalem
