The story of Mordechai Vanunu and How the world came to know of Israel as a nuclear power !!!

Mordechai Vanunu and Israel's nukes

Sunday October 5, 1986: Headline: Revealed - the secrets of Israel's nuclear arsenal/ Atomic technician Mordechai Vanunu reveals secret weapons production

THE SECRETS of a subterranean factory engaged in the manufacture of Israeli nuclear weapons have been uncovered by The Sunday Times Insight team.

Hidden beneath the Negev desert, the factory has been producing atomic warheads for the last 20 years. Now it has almost certainly begun manufacturing thermo-nuclear weapons, with yields big enough to destroy entire cities.

Information about Israel's capacity to manufacture the bomb come from the testimony of Mordechai Vanunu, a 31-year-old Israeli who worked as a nuclear technician for nearly 10 years in Machon 2 - a top secret, underground bunker built to provide the vital components necessary for weapons production at Dimona, the Israeli nuclear research establishment.

Mordechai Vanunu in the garden of St. George's Cathedral, two days after his release from prison. (April 23, 2004)

Vanunu's evidence has surprised nuclear weapons experts who were approached by Insight to verify its accuracy because it shows that Israel does not just have the atom bomb - which has been long suspected - but that it has become a major nuclear power.

Israeli agents got early wind of Vanunu's intentions. Even before publication of the story, they had him lured from Britain. They abducted him in Italy, and dumped his drugged body onto an Israeli cargo vessel bound for Israel. In the following months he was charged with espionage and treason, and was convicted at a closed-door trial.

In the 12 years between his kidnapping and his release from solitary confinement, Vanunu was denied all human contact except with guards, members of his immediate family, a lawyer, and a priest. His brothers and sisters saw him only through a thick metal screen. Amnesty International condemned his prison isolation as "cruel, inhuman and degrading," and they have called for his immediate release. There are concerns about the effect of this prolonged confinement on his physical and mental health.

Mordechai Vanunu spent 18 years in prison, including more than 11 years in solitary confinement. Vanunu was released from prison in 2004, subject to a broad array of restrictions on his speech and movement. Since then he has been briefly arrested several times for violations of those restrictions, including giving various interviews to foreign journalists and attempting to leave Israel.

In 2007 Vanunu was sentenced to six months in prison for violating terms of his parole. The sentence was considered unusual even by the prosecution who expected a suspended sentence. In response, Amnesty International issued a press release on 2 July 2007, stating that "The organization considers Mordechai Vanunu to be a prisoner of conscience and calls for his immediate and unconditional release.

Watch the following documentry about Vanunu and the fightr carried out by a couple who adopted him to see him free ...... kudos to the great old couple ......