Madam, - The imminent release of Mordechai Vanunu from prison in Ashkelon, Israel, raises its own problems with regard to issues of justice and human rights.
Dr Vanunu has been in prison for almost 18 years, the first 11 of those in solitary confinement. His offence was that, as a conscientious objector to nuclear weapons of mass destruction, he revealed to the world that Israel possessed such weapons. Kidnapped in Italy, he was drugged and brought back to Israel where he was put on trial secretly - even observers from Amnesty International were not allowed to attend.
Vanunu is a hero of world peace, not a criminal. He did not deserve imprisonment, much less the cruel sentence of solitary confinement imposed by his kidnappers and judges. However, granted that he has been regarded as a criminal by successive Israeli governments, is it not enough retribution in their eyes that he has now served his savage sentence?
Sadly, as reported in the Star Tribune on April 12th, Dr Vanunu will not be allowed to leave Israel to live with the Catholic couple who adopted him years ago in the vain hope of making him a US citizen. The Israeli government, it is reported, has forbidden him to leave the country or to go within 300 yards of its borders. If this is true, it appears to be a particularly unnecessary, vengeful and unjust action. Human Rights organisations around the world will, no doubt, fight the issue with the Israeli authorities.
I hope those Governments who thought it was so necessary to pillage and destroy Iraq because of their mistaken belief that it possessed weapons of mass destruction will now belatedly take up the case of someone who is on public record as saying that he is against the existence of such murderous weapons in any country whatsoever.
The Irish Government, in particular, should put pressure on the Israeli government to restore full human rights and dignity to this true hero of peace. - Yours, etc.,
JUSTIN MORAHAN,
Scholarstown Park,
Dublin 16.