MORDECHAI VANUNU, the man who revealed Israel’s nuclear secrets to the world in 1986, has been placed under three days’ house arrest after being detained yesterday for violating a ban on maintaining contact with foreigners.
It is expected that he will be indicted tomorrow.
Mr Vanunu was detained by Jerusalem police after meeting a Norwegian woman. His lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, claimed the meeting was of a romantic nature and had nothing to do with nuclear issues.
In court, the nuclear whistleblower, who has been campaigning unsuccessfully for years for permission to leave Israel, told reporters: “This Jewish state has 200 atomic . . . hydrogen bombs, atomic weapons, neutron bomb. They are not able to say they have the bomb, they are not able to destroy anyone . . . instead they arrest Vanunu Mordechai.” He spoke to reporters in English, as he refuses to speak Hebrew as part of his ongoing campaign against the Israeli authorities.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said Mr Vanunu was detained on suspicion that he met several foreigners, in violation of the conditions of his 2004 release from prison, imposed by Israel because of fears he may reveal additional nuclear secrets.
Mr Vanunu, a low-level technician at Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant, first hit the headlines in 1986 when he leaked details with photographs he took surreptitiously to the British Sunday Times.
The revelations marked the first concrete proof that Israel had the capacity to manufacture nuclear bombs. Israel maintains a policy of “nuclear ambiguity” , neither confirming nor denying foreign reports of its nuclear potential.
Partly based on the secrets he revealed, foreign experts concluded that Israel was the world’s sixth-largest nuclear power.
After the Sunday Times expose, Mr Vanunu was seduced by an attractive 26-year-old female Mossad agent, codenamed Cindy, taken to Rome, drugged, and smuggled back to Israel to stand trial on espionage charges.
He served 18 years in prison for treason and, according to the conditions of his release, is still forbidden from leaving the country or having contact with foreigners.
Mr Vanunu, who converted from Judaism to Christianity, became a hate figure for many Israelis, but was considered a hero by the country’s minuscule anti-nuclear movement.
Most Israelis defend their right to develop nuclear weapons, arguing that Israel needs a last-resort nuclear deterrent.
In 2007 Mr Vanunu was sentenced to six months in jail for violating the ban on contact with foreigners. He has always claimed he was proud of his actions, and his relentless campaign to be allowed to leave Israel has received support from human rights groups worldwide.
Earlier this year he wrote a letter to the Nobel peace committee explaining his refusal to be on the list of candidates for the peace prize because Israeli president Shimon Peres, believed to be an architect of Israel’s nuclear programme, was a Nobel laureate.