Mordechai Vanunu

April 21, 2004.
On this momentous day, Mordechai Vanunu walked out of the prison which had caged him for nearly 18 years.
But he isn't free yet.

Israel has imposed severe restrictions on Vanunu, including not allowing him to leave Israel.
But this is absurd. Mordechai Vanunu has been locked away from the world for almost 18 years. He has no more secrets to reveal and is not a threat to the security of the state of Israel.

There are of course many unknowns, but the international campaign is moving forward with attempting to persuade Israel to release Vanunu unconditionally, and allow him to leave the country.
Public pressure has brought important changes over the years. In 1998, pressure from his supporters around the world pried open the lock on Mordechai's isolation cell after his first eleven and one half years in solitary confinement. Israel once claimed that the transcript of Vanunu's closed door trial was so sensitive it could never be made public. But several years ago, bending to public pressure, it released most of the trial record and permitted the Knesset's first open debate on nuclear secrecy. And although Israel still officially denies that it has a nuclear arsenal, government censors are allowing increased coverage of the once taboo topic in Israel's mainstream media.

We need your help to apply maximum pressure and demand that they unconditionally release Mordechai Vanunu!

 The U.S. Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu

Contact Mordechai Vanunu

To send books, CDs, etc., to Mordechai Vanunu, you may send them to him c/o the postal address below. Mordechai prefers, however, to receive email!

Here is the email address:
vanunumvjc@hotmail.com

and here is the postal address:
Mordechai Vanunu
c/o Cathedral Church of St. George
20 Nablus Road
PO Box 19018
Jerusalem 91190
Israel

Background

Mordechai Vanunu was held for 18 years in Ashkelon Prison in Israel, for informing the public about Israel's secret nuclear weapons program. Following his revelations about Israel's nuclear weapons to a British newspaper, he was lured from Britain to Rome, where he was abducted by Israeli agents. The hand in the logo signifies the means by which Vanunu pressed his palm to the window of a police van in Jerusalem, on Sep 30 1986, to inform the world of his kidnapping.

Until Mar 12 1998, he was held in solitary confinement. This is the longest known stretch in solitary confinement to be endured by anyone.

Vanunu was one of 11 children of Moroccan Jewish parents who emigrated to Israel in 1963, when he was age 9. When he was a young man he served in the Israeli army and then went to work in the Dimona nuclear "research center" in the Negev desert near his home at Beersheba. The facility harbored an underground plutonium separation plant operated in strictest secrecy. As the years went by he grew increasingly troubled about his work in the nuclear bomb program. In 1985, before leaving Dimona, he took extensive photographs inside the factory in order to document the truth for his countrymen and the entire world.

Traveling through Asia with the film in his backpack, Vanunu made his way to Sydney Australia, where he found companionship in an Anglican church social justice community. He shared with them the story of his nuclear background. In Sydney he converted to Christianity, and was baptized in July 1986.

A British newspaper, the London Sunday Times, learned of his story and sent a reporter to Sydney to check it out. The newspaper then flew Vanunu to England, where his photos and his facts were further checked by British scientists familiar with nuclear weapons. Vanunu's story, published October 5, 1986, gave the world its first authoritative confirmation that tiny Israel had become a major nuclear weapons power, with material for as many as 200 nuclear warheads of advanced design.

Israeli agents got early wind of Vanunu's intentions. Even before publication of the story, they had him lured from Britain. They abducted him in Italy, and dumped his drugged body onto an Israeli cargo vessel bound for Israel. In the following months he was charged with espionage and treason, and was convicted at a closed-door trial.

In the 12 years between his kidnapping and his release from solitary confinement, Vanunu was denied all human contact except with guards, members of his immediate family, a lawyer, and a priest. His brothers and sisters saw him only through a thick metal screen. Amnesty International condemned his prison isolation as "cruel, inhuman and degrading," and they have called for his immediate release. There are concerns about the effect of this prolonged confinement on his physical and mental health.

I Am Your Spy

by Mordechai Vanunu -written from Ashkelon Prison, Israel

I am the clerk, the technician, the mechanic, the driver.
They said, Do this, do that, don't look left or right,
don't read the text. Don't look at the whole machine. You
are only responsible for this one bolt. For this one rubber-stamp.
This is your only concern. Don't bother with what is above you.
Don't try to think for us. Go on, drive. Keep going. On, on.

So they thought, the big ones, the smart ones, the futurologists.
There is nothing to fear. Not to worry.
Everything's ticking just fine.
Our little clerk is a diligent worker. He's a simple mechanic.
He's a little man.
Little men's ears don't hear, their eyes don't see.
We have heads, they don't.

Answer them, said he to himself, said the little man,
the man with a head of his own. Who is in charge? Who knows
where this train is going?
Where is their head? I too have a head.
Why do I see the whole engine,
Why do I see the precipice--
is there a driver on this train?

The clerk driver technician mechanic looked up.
He stepped back and saw -- what a monster.
Can't believe it. Rubbed his eyes and -- yes,
it's there all right. I'm all right. I do see
the monster. I'm part of the system.
I signed this form. Only now I am reading the rest of it.

This bolt is part of a bomb. This bolt is me. How
did I fail to see, and how do the others go on
fitting bolts. Who else knows?
Who has seen? Who has heard? -- The emperor really is naked.
I see him. Why me? It's not for me. It's too big.

Rise and cry out. Rise and tell the people. You can.
I, the bolt, the technician, mechanic? -- Yes, you.
You are the secret agent of the people. You are the eyes of the nation.
Agent-spy, tell us what you've seen. Tell us what the insiders, the clever ones, have hidden from us.
Without you, there is only the precipice. Only catastrophe.

I have no choice. I'm a little man, a citizen, one of the people,
but I'll do what I have to. I've heard the voice of my conscience
and there's nowhere to hide.
The world is small, small for Big Brother.
I'm on your mission. I'm doing my duty. Take it from me.

Come and see for yourselves. Lighten my burden. Stop the train.
Get off the train. The next stop -- nuclear disaster. The next book,
the next machine. No. There is no such thing.