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Israeli nuclear whistle-blower to be released today

By Praful Bidwai

JERUSALEM, APRIL 20. Mordechai Vanunu, one of the world's pre-eminent prisoners of conscience, who has spent 18 years in Israel's jails for leaking out its nuclear secrets, will be released on Wednesday. This promises to be a major event for the global peace movement, many of whose representatives (including from India, the U.S., U.K., Japan etc.) have gathered here and in Ashkelon, where he is detained.

Mr. Vanunu's release underscores the issue of transparency in democracy, especially in respect of security-related "official secrets", as well as of whistle-blower protection, itself recently highlighted in India.

It also puts the limelight back on Israel's nuclear weapons programme.

Israel is the only country in the West Asia-North Africa region which is known to have a highly developed nuclear weapons programme, with 300 warheads in its arsenal. (By contrast, India is estimated by independent experts to have 40 to 80 nuclear weapons, and Pakistan between 12 and 30.)

Mr. Vanunu will now at last be a free man of sorts — not least because of the efforts of a long-sustained campaign both in Israel and internationally, which has defended his fundamental rights in the face of harsh actions by the Israeli state.

In October 1986, Mr. Vanunu, a former engineer at Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor, disclosed to The Sunday Times (London) that Israel had between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons, backing this with evidence and photographs. Following this, he was abducted by Mossad secret agents from Rome, smuggled by sea to Israel, and tried behind closed doors. He was sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment for `treason'. The trial and conviction came in for sharp protests from jurists, and human rights and peace activists from the world over, including Noam Chomsky and Nobel Peace laureates and groups like the International Peace Bureau and the (U.K.) Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

The Vanunu issue has long transcended the question of nuclear secrecy in a state which is far more preoccupied with security and secrecy than perhaps any other in the world. As the Israeli daily Haaretz put it, "The conditions of his imprisonment and the obsession about keeping him silent have turned," at least for his supporters, "into symbols of an oppressive Israel that is ... possibly more problematic than" the nuclear arsenal itself.

Mr. Vanunu has spent more than 11 years in solitary confinement. Fervent appeals for relaxing the conditions of his incarceration were repeatedly rejected by the Israeli state.

In keeping with its policy, Mr. Vanunu will not really be a free man tomorrow. The Government has imposed draconian restrictions on him. For instance, he cannot have a passport or leave Israel for one year. He cannot give media interviews, nor disclose information pertaining to his work at Dimona — although he has already revealed this to The Sunday Times.

Mr. Vanunu must inform the police 24 hours in advance if he wishes to sleep in a place other than the residence he chooses (about which he must inform the authorities). He must keep at least 500 metres away from any border crossing. He is barred from visiting any Israeli ports and the Ben Gurion international airport.

He can participate in Internet chats only with prior permission. He can go near foreign embassies but he cannot enter them. These conditions have been imposed under the State of Emergency statute of 1945 passed under the colonial British Mandate, similar to the War-time Defence of India Rules, themselves precursors to India's harsh anti-"terrorist" laws, including POTA. Some of them were marginally relaxed after advance publicity for the original curbs attracted adverse comment and defence officials decided that some restrictions are legally untenable.

The curbs have angered the Free Vanunu Campaign, which regards them as akin to South Africa's gagging of apartheid's opponents. The Association for Civil Liberties in Israel has reportedly decided to appeal them.

The Israeli authorities, however, do not seem themselves to respect the restrictions' rationale. Last night, Israeli TV channels broadcast tapes of Mr. Vanunu's interrogation by prison officials, released to them by the Shin Bet security service and defence officials.

In the tape, Mr. Vanunu insists he is not a `spy' or a `traitor': he merely "let the world know what was happening" for reasons of conscience. He also said the Dimona reactor should be destroyed — just as the Israelis in the early 1980s bombed Iraq's reactor, then under construction.

The tapes were leaked without Mr. Vanunu's consent. This has outraged his family and civil liberties activists.

It is not clear if, after his long ordeal and official `debriefings', Mr. Vanunu is in any state to articulate the nuclear disarmament standpoint or work as an activist in the global peace movement. But his past contribution to raising awareness about the nuclear danger, especially in West Asia, is both substantial and ineradicable.

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