[News] Vanunu: What I did was not treason or espionage

Mon Apr 19 17:44:34 EDT 2004

Vanunu: What I did was not espionage or treason
        "The decision-makers in Israel don't learn and don't forget"

By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent
19/04/2004
"There is no need for a Jewish state," he says, adding that a Palestinian 
state should be established instead where the Jews can also live."
"Despite everything that was published, nothing has changed. No one came to 
Israel and made demands [of it]."...  "just as they destroyed the Iraqi 
nuclear reactor,
I want the Israeli nuclear reactor destroyed."
Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, who is due to be released from an 
Israeli jail on Wednesday after 18 years, says that he does not believe 
that what he did constitutes treason or espionage.

"I claim that I wanted to tell the world about what was happening," he is 
heard saying in a recording of a meeting at his cell in Ashkelon's Shikma 
Prison last month with a senior defense establishment official and a Shin 
Bet representative.

When asked if it constituted treason, he replied "I will tell you in my own 
words: this is not treason, it is informing the world, unlike Israel's 
policies."

Vanunu said Israel should not have trusted him with sensitive information 
and that the "bigshot psychologists" from the Shin Bet and the Mossad spy 
security services should have spotted him as a potential security risk. 
"You gave information to the wrong man," he is quoted as saying.

Vanunu goes on to slam the state. "There is no need for a Jewish state," he 
says, adding that a Palestinian state should be established instead where 
the Jews can also live.

He is also heard complaining that no actions were taken against Israel 
following the details he revealed on its nuclear program. "Despite 
everything that was published, nothing has changed. No one came to Israel 
and made demands [of it]." When asked if that is what he wanted will 
happen, he responds, "just as they destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor, I 
want the Israeli nuclear reactor destroyed." Israel bombed the Iraqi 
reactor in 1981.

The former nuclear technician also denies that he is writing a book. "I 
write letters, I write my political opinions. Is that wrong?" He claims 
that the information he has on the nuclear reactor in the southern Israeli 
town of Dimona is not longer relevant. "I've been inside for 20 years, 
everything has changed ... science and technology have progressed in huge 
leaps, so what I saw seems to me to be very old. I don't think that the 
Americans or Europeans need this information. They do not need Vanunu to 
tell them. If they want information, they will get it ... As for myself, I 
just want to repeat the things I already said and that were published."

Vanunu was snatched from Rome by the Mossad in 1986 after being lured into 
a rendezvous by a female agent, smuggled to Israel by yacht, tried behind 
closed doors and sentenced to 18 years for treason.

The recording of the interview has been passed on to a special public 
relations committee set up recently by government ministries to coordinate 
Vanunu's release. Someone passed the tape onto Israeli television stations 
Channel 1 and 10, and will be broadcast Monday evening. Channel 10 also 
passed the tape onto the Israeli daily newspapers Yedioth Aharonoth and Maariv.

Head of the public relations committee, Rachel Naidik-Ashkenazi told 
Haaretz on Monday that she had not passed the tape onto the media, and 
refused to say who had.

She said that officials decided to release the tape "so that the Israeli 
public can get to know Vanunu."

The Prisons Service decided to vide tape Vanunu, a short time after the 
audio tape was made, but without the defense officials' knowledge. A 
complaint was then filed with Attorney General Menachem Mazuz who is 
currently looking into the matter. Mazuz did however permit the public 
relations committee to publish the tapes in the media.

Vanunu has filed a complaint with defense officials against releasing the 
video tape, saying that he was told that his privacy would not be infringed.

Vanunu to be greeted by foreign and local supporters, media fanfare

Both the defense establishment and supporters of Vanunu have begun the 
countdown to Wednesday, when the nuclear whistle-blower and former employee 
at Dimona's top-secret atomic facility is scheduled to walk out of the 
Shikma prison after serving 18 years in jail for his conviction on treason 
and espionage charges.

A veritable "Vanunu festival" is planned to mark the prisoner's 
long-awaited release. Peace activists and anti-nuclear campaigners from the 
United States, Britain, Japan, Ireland, Poland, Hungary and other countries 
have been arriving in Israel since last week. They will number some 90 
individuals, says Rina Moss of the Israeli Committee to Free Mordechai 
Vanunu, which is coordinating the planned events. Nobel Peace Prize 
laureate Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland, actress Susannah York, 
British parliamentarians Jeremy Corbyn and Colin Breed, and Reverend Bruce 
Kent, the president of the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, are 
among those expected to attend. Playwright Harold Pinter, actress Emma 
Thompson and London Mayor Ken Livingstone have sent letters of support that 
will be read during the ceremonies outside the prison.

The 90 foreigners will be joined by a few hundred Israelis, who will hold a 
solidarity watch outside the prison gates tomorrow, and welcome Vanunu on 
his release the following day. Local and international television crews 
will also be present to broadcast live from the scene.

The authorities are also preparing for the release. Prime Minister Ariel 
Sharon's media adviser, Assi Shariv, met Sunday with the spokesmen of 
several government ministries to coordinate positions and formulate a 
uniform public line, including a response in the event that Vanunu violates 
the restrictions imposed on him after his release.

"The decision-makers in Israel don't learn and don't forget a thing," said 
a senior government official. "If they were to allow Vanunu to do as he has 
requested and leave Israel, within a few days, the interest in him would 
die down and not reach the heights we are expecting to see."

Speaking to Haaretz, Mordechai's brother, Meir Vanunu, said: "I am both 
surprised and not surprised by the Israeli media. All these years, 
particularly when he was in solitary confinement in his cell, the Israeli 
media, and the electronic media in particular, showed no interest in him. 
This is why I have refused until now to be interviewed on television. Now, 
they are suddenly jumping on the bandwagon."

While Vanunu's supporters are still worried about the possibility of a 
last-minute trick on the part of the authorities, a security source said 
that Vanunu would be released on time, in the morning, just like any other 
prisoner.

On Saturday, Shin Bet security service officials at Ben-Gurion 
International Airport detained and questioned Sharon Wallace in the 
presence of her three children, aged 10, 15 and 17, for some three hours. 
Luca, the youngest of the three children, is the son of Meir Vanunu and the 
nephew of Mordechai Vanunu.

"They made us undergo a pretty humiliating physical examination," Sharon 
Wallace, who holds a U.S. passport, told Haaretz Saturday night. "And they 
accused me of planning to use my children to pass on classified information 
from Mordechai following his release from prison. I told them that it was 
insulting to hear empty claims such as these."

A day earlier, Ernest Rodker, coordinator of the British wing of the 
Campaign to Free Vanunu and for a Nuclear Free Middle East, was detained at 
the airport for a similar length of time. During his interrogation, the 
Shin Bet officials asked him if he was carrying anything in his belongings 
that could be detrimental to Israel. "They held me for hours without 
explaining to me why," Rodker told Haaretz. "I find it hard to understand 
this paranoid behavior; it reeks of a police state."

Mordechai Vanunu is set to be released on Wednesday, after 18 years in 
jail. (Archives)

Related Links
* Vanunu appeals limitations to be imposed after release
* Vanunu to face numerous restrictions after prison release
* Vanunu tells brothers: I have no more nuclear secrets

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