Mordechai Vanunu: Prisoner of Conscience and the World's Most Famous Whistleblower
Mordechai Vanunu
"I have sacrificed my freedom and risked my life in order to expose the danger of nuclear weapons which threatens this whole region. I acted on behalf of all citizens and all of humanity."-Mordechai VanunuClick Here to "The US Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu" website
Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear technician imprisoned by Israeli Government for 18 years for revealing Israel's nuclear capacity, is to be released under tight travel restrictions on Wednesday (April 21,2004).
But after his release, he will be barred from leaving Israel for at least six months, a restriction that will then be reviewed and could be extended. He will be forbidden to have contact with foreigners or discuss his work at the Dimona reactor.
Mr. Vanunu said his goal was to leave Israel. He said he would like his family to live in the country of his birth, Morocco.
Under its policy of "nuclear ambiguity," Israel does not confirm or deny its nuclear capacity. But Mr. Vanunu lifted the ambiguity curtain on Israel's nuclear capacity in 1986, when he provided photographs and details of Israel's reactor, near the desert town of Dimona, to The Sunday Times of London.
This is a photo of a plutonium separation plant's control room,with equipment recognizable by nuclear scientists as part of a nuclear weapons production facility. Dimona Nuclear Weapons Facility Machon 2, Negrev Desert, Israel (courtesy M. Vanunu)
Israel built the Dimona plant with help from France
Agents of the Israeli spy agency Mossad kidnapped Mr. Vanunu from Italy that year, and he has been kept largely out of sight ever since. Sentenced for treason, he was held in solitary confinement for more than 11 years, and his mental health suffered, his brother Meir has said.
While in prison, he was adopted by an American couple, Nick and Mary Eoloff.
Personal Profile - compiled by The Guardian, UK
Vanunu was born in 1954 in Marrakesh, Morocco, into a large and deeply religious Jewish family which emigrated to Israel in 1963.
Vanunu served for three years in the sappers' unit of the Israeli Defence Force after he left school. He held the rank of sergeant and was given an honourable discharge. He then became a technician at the nuclear reactor centre in Dimona. He worked there from 1976 to 1985, when he was made redundant.
At the same time, he was studying philosophy at Ben Gurion university and already beginning to feel uncomfortable about a number of his government's policies.
He was also beginning to come to the attention of the authorities, not least because, along with four other Jewish students and five Arab students, he had formed a radical group, called Campus.
He was also an admirer of his professor, Evron Pollakov, a radical who had refused to serve with the Israeli army in Lebanon and had been jailed as a result.
The security services noted Vanunu's increasing radicalism, his professed sympathy for the Palestinians, and the fact that he had links with an organisation called the Movement for the Advancement of Peace.
By now he was starting to suffer what he later described as a crisis of conscience while working at the Dimona plant, which was clandestinely producing nuclear weapons.
He started to take photos of the plant, without having made a decision to do anything with them. As he later explained: "It crossed my mind, of course, but I just wanted to think over my future and make plans to see more of the world." Made redundant in 1985, he used his $7,500 payoff to travel round the world, visiting Nepal, Burma and Thailand.
He came to Australia where he booked into a hostel in the Kings Cross district and found himself odd jobs as a hotel dishwasher and later a taxi driver. "The people are friendly," he wrote to a former girlfriend. "They drink a lot of beer."
At around this time, he introduced himself to the local church, St John's, where he was made welcome by the Rev John McKnight, who was well known in the area for his work with homeless people and drug addicts.
He gradually decided to convert to Christianity, being baptised as an Anglican in 1986 as John Crossman- a move that was to alienate him from his parents and most of his 11 brothers and sisters.
At the church, during a discussion on peace and nuclear proliferation, Vanunu divulged some of the knowledge that he had gained at Dimona. By chance, a freelance Colombian journalist called Oscar Guerrero was working at the church. He heard about Vanunu and encouraged him to tell all.
Guerrero contacted the Australian press, but without success. He headed for Europe and approached the Sunday Times, which assigned the investigative journalist Peter Hounam and the Insight team to the story.
In the summer of 1986, Hounam flew to Sydney to assess the strength of the allegation that Israel, despite its denials, was secretly developing a nuclear arsenal. " I liked him straight away," said Hounam this week as he prepared to set off to Israel for Vanunu's release. "We spent 12 days together and he answered all my questions in a very straightforward way. He spoke about his disillusionment about what was going on in Israel."
It was agreed that Vanunu should come to London, where he could talk to nuclear scientists in the peace movement and be debriefed. Hounam continued to interview him, and the paper prepared to publish the revelations.
However, before the story had even appeared in the Sunday Times, Vanunu disappeared.
He had grown frustrated with a delay in publication, and was upset by a piece in the Sunday Mirror which wrongly accused him of being a hoaxer.
How Israel's Mossad captured Vanunu Read here for more
On September 30, 1986, Vanunu was befriended by a young blonde woman, who posed as an American tourist under the name of Cindy. She seemed to be attracted to him, and was critical of the Israeli government.
Hounam told him: "Morde, this woman might be lying, she might be a Mossad plant," but Vanunu thought she was genuine. "Cindy" was the undercover Mossad agent Cheryl Hanin Bentov, who then managed to lure Vanunu to Rome for "holidays". " Cindy" paid for air tickets to Rome, said that her sister had a flat on the outskirts of the city, and suggested that they could have a holiday there.
Vanunu believed her until the moment he entered the flat and was overpowered by two men. He was injected with a drug, smuggled on to a ship and taken back to Israel.
He was freighted back to Israel. At Mossad's headquarters, he was shown a copy of the Sunday Times story which had appeared on October 5 and told: "See the damage you have done." .
Convicted of treason and espionage at a closed trial, Vanunu was jailed for 18 years.
The first eleven and a half were spent in solitary confinement. There was fear for his mental health as he grew increasingly despairing. For the first part of his sentence, the light in his cell was kept on all the time.
International Support for Vanunu
On October 5, 1986, the Sunday Times published the earth-shattering interview. The international community then expressed little condemnation of Israel's abduction on foreign soil and, bar Arab states and a group of non-proliferation activists, few expessed real concern over Israel's unsupervised nuclear program.
His natural parents are still alive, but it has mainly been his two brothers, Meir, a photographer in Israel, and Asher, the deputy head of a high school there, who have supported him during his long incarceration.
Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon papers in an attempt to end the war in Vietnam in the 70s, has described Vanunu as "heroic" and often refers to him as such in his public speeches.
Sabby Sagall, one of the founding members of the London-based Campaign to Free Vanunu and for a Nuclear Free Middle East, said: "He is one of the bravest and most inspirational people of our time. If Bush and Blair want to find weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, Vanunu has told them where to go."
Professor Joseph Rotblat, a Nobel peace prize winner, has also been outspoken in his support.
Among those flying to Israel this weekend are Bruce Kent, vice-president of CND, and the actor Susannah York.
Ernest Rodker, the secretary of the campaign, said: "He is in some physical danger if he remains in Israel. A talkshow host called for him to be wiped out recently."
Mossad seductress, Cheryl Hanin-Bentov, who trapped Vanunu lives in USA
Read here for more
Cheryl Hanin, the agent, alias "Cindy", who back in 1986 seduced Mordechai Vanunu in London, then lured him to Rome and into the hands of Mossad, who drugged him and smuggled him back to Israel, turns out to be alive, well, married and distinctly prosperous in Alaqua, Florida, USA .
Cheryl Hanin , her husband and daughters live today in a private home in the middle of a green and manicured golf course. Cheryl drives in a blue town and country van, her husband drives a shiny Chevy Impala. In the pastoral landscape, white golf carts carrying the residents of the prestigious neighbourhood move about quietly. This is a dream residential compound for golf lovers, 25 minutes drive north of Orlando. Several hundred homes are spread out in the neighbourhood land, among artificial ponds and dense tropical growth.
Ms Hanin has until recently worked as an estate agent, as does her husband, also a former Mossad operative.
Their daughters, aged 12 and 16, speak Hebrew, and go every year to "the prestigious Scouts' camp in Atlanta, which teaches Zionism and has Israeli counsellers, to which Jewish children from all over the US come. The Bentovs are among the generous donors to the camp".
The person closest to Cheryl Bentov, whom she trusts unconditionally, is her mother, Riki Hanin, who lives close by and works as a property agent in Orlando and is very active in the Jewish community.
One unnamed acquaintance was quoted by Yedhiot Arhronot newspaper as saying she has "exposed and shaky nerves. It was enough for her to suspect that her friends were talking about her big secret, for her to immediately cut off contact. Even relatives who talked about her found themselves banished from the family. She moves between discretion and paranoia".
To Vanunu's many supporters in the international anti-nuclear movement she is the Mata Hari who destroyed the life of an idealist who thought he was acting in the higher cause of world peace.
"For me this is a black story and I just want to erase it and forget it," the Israeli Yedhiot Arhronot paper quoted her telling a friend in Israel.
When The Sunday Times, who first published Mr Vanunu's sensational revelations of the secrets of the Dimona nuclear plant, discovered her living quietly in the northern Israeli town of Netanya in 1988, she left Israel for her native United States.
Since then, she and her family have not returned to Israel, although they still maintain a home in Kochav Yair, which, in effect, is their only link to Israel. She was "rediscovered" by the press a decade later and moved within Florida.
Last month the St Petersburg Times in Florida unearthed her again, and published a lengthy story. It had her driving "a red Cutlass convertible" and estimated that her house was worth just more than $500,000 (?330,000) .
Neither Ms Hanin nor her husband were keen to be interviewed. When approached by the American newspaper, St Petersburg Times, "the burly Ben Tov", dressed in khakis and a maroon knit shirt, declined a request for an interview, and when a reporter visited the firm's headquarters in downtown Orlando. "So long, see you later," he said, and quickly retreated to his office. When the American paper reached a woman last month by telephone, she replied: "I have no interest in talking." And hung up.
Her close friend in Florida told the Yedhiot Arhronot newspaper : "She left Israel to flee the media and the people who burrowed into her life. Since this affair Cheryl wants only one thing: a normal, quiet life."
This is a very different life from the one which prepared her for her last major assignment. Gordon Thomas, author of Gideon's Spies, the Secret History of Mossad, wrote:
"She was sent on practice missions, breaking into an occupied hotel room, stealing documents from an office.After her training, Ms Hanin joined the Mossad unit that worked with Israeli embassies, where she apparently posed as the wife or girlfriend of other agents.
"She was roused from her bed in the dead of night and dispatched on more exercises: picking up a tourist in a nightclub, then disengaging herself outside his hotel. Every move she made was observed by her tutors."
Her last mission began when she engineered a meeting with Vanunu in Leicester Square and suggested a coffee, saying she was a beautician on holiday. Next day they met in the Tate gallery and began to see more of each other.
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