Israeli Who Revealed Nuclear Secrets Is Freed after 18 years

April 21, 2004 - New York Times
Israeli Who Revealed Nuclear Secrets Is Freed
By GREG MYRE

SHKELON, Israel, April 21 ?- After 18 years behind bars for revealing Israeli nuclear secrets, a defiant Mordechai Vanunu headed out of prison today a partly free man, flashing the victory sign and declaring he was proud of what he had done.

Mr. Vanunu, 49, is returning to a society where he appears to be as widely reviled today as in 1986, when he was kidnapped by Israel's intelligence service in Rome after granting a detailed interview on Israel's clandestine nuclear program to The Sunday Times of London.

The former nuclear technician faces a list of restrictions that bar him from leaving the country for a year or speaking with foreigners. He must tell authorities in advance before traveling inside Israel.

Yet he held an impromptu press conference in the Shikma Prison courtyard before reaching the street, where dozens of supporters, mostly American and British, cheered him as a hero of the anti-nuclear movement, while several hundred Israeli detractors denounced him as a spy and a traitor.

"To all those calling me a traitor, I'm proud and happy to do what I did," said Mr. Vanunu, dressed in a white, checkered shirt and a dark tie.

Israel's justice minister, Yosef Lapid, said Mr. Vanunu will be closely monitored because the government believes he could divulge additional nuclear information.

"This is the treatment he deserved even if the radical left turns him into a hero," Mr. Lapid told Israeli Army Radio. "He betrayed Israel."

But Mr. Vanunu said he had divulged all his secrets in the interview with The Sunday Times, where he provided photos and described his nine years at Israel's nuclear complex in the southern town of Dimona, in the Negev Desert.

"My secret is dead," he said in fractured English, refusing to speak Hebrew. "My case is dead. Everything was published."

Mr. Vanunu, who converted to Christianity and said he wanted to move to the United States, get married and study history, added: "I am not harming Israel. I'm not interested in Israel."

His religiously devout parents have disowned him, while a Minnesota couple, Nick and Mary Eoloff, adopted him in a failed bid to win American citizenship for Mr. Vanunu.

Before Mr. Vanunu spoke out, it was widely assumed that Israel had nuclear arms. But to this day, Israel refuses to confirm or deny possessing such weapons under its policy of "nuclear ambiguity."

Based on Mr. Vanunu's information, nuclear experts estimated Israel possessed between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons. More recent estimates are in a similar range.

Israel has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has adamantly rejected international inspections. Israel argues that it needs a plausible deterrent threat in a region where its says several countries, including Iraq, Libya and Iran, have tried, or are still trying to develop nuclear arms.

But critics say that Israel, with the tacit backing of the United States, has been allowed to develop a large nuclear arsenal in secret, while the Americans have insisted that other Middle East countries be prevented from building weapons of mass destruction.

Mr. Vanunu said Israel did not "need the nuclear arms, especially now when all the Middle East is free from nuclear weapons."

"My message today to all the world is open Dimona reactor for inspection," he said.

He also complained of "very cruel and barbaric treatment" in prison, where he spent more than 11 years in solitary confinement.

As he reached the front of the prison, Mr. Vanunu stuck one arm through the blue-and-white gate and gave the victory sign. He initially wanted to walk out, but the police would not permit it with the mostly hostile crowd chanting such slogans as "Death to traitors."

Instead, he staged the news conference just inside the front gate. The Israeli authorities made no attempt to stop him, but after nearly a half-hour, his brother Meir Vanunu guided him into a car.

Supporters threw roses on the vehicle, which was surrounded by police as it inched through the crowd.

"I felt enormous elation," said Susannah York, the British actress who was among the foreign supporters who came for the release.

But angry Israelis began pounding on the car with their fists and screaming at him until the police escort was able to clear a path. Some of Mr. Vanunu's less extreme critics simply held up blackened roses as a symbol of their opposition.

Among those jostling with the police outside the prison was Peter Hounam, the journalist who wrote Mr. Vanunu's story in The Sunday Times.

"I just want to see him and say, `Hello,' " Mr. Hounam said. "He's a decent guy and he doesn't deserve all this."

Mr. Hounam was unable to reach Mr. Vanunu at the prison. But Mr. Vanunu was immediately taken to pray at St. George's, an Anglican church in Jerusalem. There, the two men exchanged hugs.

Mr. Vanunu's supporters say he will be living in an upscale apartment complex in Tel Aviv, but have expressed concerns for his safety.

Mr. Vanunu was born in Morocco, and his family came to Israel when he was 9. He fought in the 1973 Mideast War and started working at the Dimona reactor in 1976. After several years, he became involved in left-wing student politics at Ben-Gurion University.

Upon leaving the nuclear plant in 1985, he traveled to Asia. In Australia, he met with a freelance journalist, and eventually The Sunday Times got wind of the story, and spent weeks interviewing him before publishing his account on Oct. 5, 1986.

Even before the story appeared, Mr. Vanunu had been lured from London to Rome by a female agent from Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. He was seized and drugged, and flown to Israel where he was convicted in 1988 in a secret trial.