Call to President Obama and World Leaders to Help Mordechai Vanunu Get His Freedom
NOBEL LAUREATES, 9 Aug 2010
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate, and Gerry Grehan, Chair, Peace People Northern Ireland, have written to President Obama, other world leaders and prominent personalities, to ask for their help in the lifting of all restrictions and for Vanunu to be allowed to leave Israel.
Mordechai Vanunu is the Israeli Nuclear whistle blower. In October l986 Vanunu told the world that Israel had a nuclear weapons programme. He was kidnapped and given 18 years imprisonment for espionage and treason. Twenty four years later he continues to be punished. He served the full 18 years of his sentence (twelve years in solitary confinement, described by Amnesty International as ‘cruel, inhuman and degrading’). When he was released, the Israeli Government put severe restrictions upon him including forbidding him to leave Israel and speak to foreign media. It was the breaking of these restrictions, in summer 2004, by speaking to the foreign media (mainly a long interview to the BBC) which resulted in his being returned to solitary confinement for three months to an Israeli prison on 23 May, 2010.
In their letter to President Obama they reveal details re Vanunu’s further punishment in an Israeli Prison.
‘On Sunday llth July, 2010, his brother Meir was granted a 30 minute visit. There was a glass between them and they spoke via the phone. He is in a cell by himself for 24 hours a day, no window except for a small wire covered crack at the top of one wall. He has about an hour’s walk a day in a very tiny yard. He was simply thrown in a cell by the security agents, the door locked, and left to suffer there all alone.’
Even when he is released from prison Vanunu will still have to remain in Israel and the restrictions will be reviewed and probably renewed yet again, as they have been renewed each year for the past 6 years. Vanunu is seen as a traitor by some, a hero by others. One thing is clear he has been punished and served his full sentence and it is time after 24 years to do the human thing and let him live as a free man.
The Israeli Supreme Court continues to accept the Secret Services’ claims that Vanunu still has secrets, but a report by Reuters on 20th December, 2009, quotes Uzi Eilam, a retired Army Brigadier-General who ran the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission between l976 and l986 said anything Vanunu might still disclose about Dimona is of little relevance. ‘I’ve always believed he should be let go’ said Eilam. ‘I don’t think he has significant things to reveal (about Dimona) now.’
Maguire and Grehan in their letter express their hope ‘that you will in some way facilitate his early release which would be welcomed by a world waiting and watching for a peaceful and secure future for Israel and its people.’
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate, Peace People
Gerry Grehan, Chair, Peace People, N.Ireland
Tel: +44 (0) 28 90 663465
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This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 9 Aug 2010.
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