Mordechai Vanunu, who spent 18 years in prison for telling the world about Israel’s secret nuclear weapons programme, was sent back to jail on Monday of this week by an Israeli court – for the ‘crime’ of talking to foreigners.
Vanunu was jailed for violating restrictions placed on him following his release from prison in 2004. Israel banned him from leaving the country, talking to foreigners without approval, or entering the West Bank.
His lawyers hit out at the sentence. ‘Vanunu was convicted for violating a rule that does not exist in any other democracy – one that forbids speaking to foreigners, regardless of the contents of the conversation,’ said his attorney Avigdor Feldman.
Vanunu, a former nuclear technician at Negev Nuclear Research Centre, was kidnapped by Israeli agents in 1986 after he had revealed the truth about Israel’s nuclear weapons programme to journalists on the Sunday Times.
He spent 18 years in jail for speaking out, most of them in solitary confinement. After his release he has continued to campaign for peace, against Israel’s ‘apartheid wall’ and for solidarity with the Palestinians – defying the Israeli state’s attempts to silence him.
Read Mordechai Vanunu’s 2004 interview with Socialist Worker: » ‘I will not be silenced’
A staffing crisis in the NHS
Health workers set to strike across four Manchester hospitals
Bus workers rejected an offer and came back out
