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Israeli nuclear weapons revealer has parole hearing

kdjgbn | 30.10.2002 22:12

Request for information on the status of Mordechai Vanunus' prison sentance, (He's the nobel peace prize winner who revealed Israels, secret, illegal nuclear weapons programme to the world.)


Does anyone know the result of the hearing detailed in the letter to the guardian below ?

Time to free Vanunu

Tuesday October 29, 2002
The Guardian

Today Mordechai Vanunu will take his place in an Israeli court, submitting a case for his immediate parole after serving well over two-thirds of an 18-year sentence.
Vanunu was kidnapped from Rome by Mossad agents because he told the Sunday Times of Israel's secret stockpile of nuclear weapons, manufactured at Dimona Nuclear Research Centre, where he had worked as a junior technician. Concerned about the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, Vanunu gave his information because he thought the world should know the truth, and the Israeli public have the chance to debate the threat posed by their possession of these weapons.

In the interests of justice Vanunu's parole application should be granted. Holding him for over 16 years in prison, 12 of which were spent in solitary confinement, has been condemned by Amnesty International as inhuman. Vanunu's continued imprisonment cannot be justified. He has suffered enough; his calls for peace should be made beyond prison walls.
Ben Birnberg, Bruce Kent, Yael Lotan, Harold Pinter, Andrew Wilski, Susannah York
Campaign to Free Vanunu

kdjgbn
- Homepage: http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,821173,00.html

Comments

Hide the following 3 comments

free vanunu

30.10.2002 23:32

Should be made a cult figure and raised to the respect offered Mandela.Put his name on all banners and placards and make sure he walks free.Israel and apartheid South Africa did cooperate on the atomic bomb for white zionists as I recall.
 http://bluekangaroo.com/kim/vanunu.html

dh

not illegal

31.10.2002 09:47

Israel did not sign any nuclear treaties, it's got peace movements everwhere annoyed, but any country has a right not to sign. It SHOULD sign, but becaus it didn't its making of nuclear materials is NOT ILLEGAL. Unlike, say, Iraq, which signed the traties, got international money to build some nuclear materials, hid it from inspectors, and might use it. (Don't want to get too into this, but that isn't an excuse for Bush to bomb the crap out of Iraq, something has to be done to disarm him, but not an unthought out war of vengeance. )

Israel should be persuaded to follow the same guidelines that everyone else subscribes to (and some of them keep to), but the fact that it doesn't is not illegal or even wrong.

Josh
mail e-mail: osh_josh_bgosh@nospam.hotmail.com

Vanunu's parole hearing postponed

31.10.2002 17:35

News forwarded from Rayna Moss, 29 Oct 2002

Mordechai Vanunu, imprisoned Israeli whistleblower, was scheduled to have a hearing on October 29, to appeal the decision of the Parole Committee not to grant him early release. Vanunu has completed 16 years of an 18-year
sentence. Most prisoners in Israel are eligible to be released after serving two-thirds of their sentence. Recently, a Parole Committee decided to release convicted murderer Yonah Avrushmi, who in 1983 threw a grenade
into a Peace Now demonstration, killing Emil Grunzweig and wounding several others.

Vanunu's brother Asher said today, that the Court postponed the hearing, as it has done repeatedly in the course of the last 18 months, without setting a new date. No reason was given for the postponement.

If not released on appeal, Vanunu is scheduled to be released in April 2004, almost 18 years after he was illegally kidnapped by the Mossad in Italy and forcibly brought to Israel to stand trial in camera.

Last month Vanunu was the recipient of two prestigious peace awards: the Nuclear Free Future Award and the Francisca Mateos Fight for Peace Award for 2002.

stuart