Beltway Area Indymedia

Israel convicts nuclear whistleblower again

JERUSALEM (AFP) Apr 30, 2007

http://www.spacewar.com/2006/070430105409.twm6uqfr.html

An Israeli court on Monday convicted nuclear whistleblower Mordechai
Vanunu, who once served 18 years in jail, of violating a ban on leaving
Israel and contacting foreign journalists.

The Jerusalem Magistrates Court found him guilty of violating the bans
imposed on him, by having contacts with foreign journalists and trying to
leave Jerusalem to visit Bethlehem, a justice ministry spokesman said.

Vanunu, who was released from prison in 2004, is due to be sentenced in
two weeks, the spokesman said.

The former technician has made repeated appeals to the supreme court to
secure the lifting of the restrictions, which are renewable every 12
months, on his freedom of movement, going abroad and speaking to foreign
journalists without permission.

The interior ministry opposes any concessions on the grounds he could leak
yet more secrets from his time as an employee at the Dimona nuclear
reactor should he be allowed to leave the country.

Vanunu served 18 years in jail for lifting the lid on the inner workings
of Israel's Dimona nuclear plant to Britain's Sunday Times newspaper.

He became something of an international cause celebre during his time in
prison. At home, he is still widely reviled for converting to Christianity
shortly before he was kidnapped in Italy and jailed in 1986 after being
covertly shipped back to the Jewish state.

Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East
with around 200 nuclear warheads but has a policy of neither confirming
nor denying its arsenal.

The Jewish state has refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
or allow international surveillance of Dimona, in the southern Negev
desert.