Home > British aided Mossad kidnap, says Vanunu
By Stephen Naysmith
ISRAELI nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu risked legal retribution during a telephone interview at a human rights festival yesterday, as he claimed that British, French, Italian, and US security services had co-operated in his 1986 kidnapping by Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.
Vanunu, 49, who completed an 18-year jail sentence in Israel in April, is barred from leaving the country and from talking to foreign nationals or foreign media under release terms.
The former nuclear technician, convicted of espionage and treason after revealing Israel’s secret nuclear weapons programme, defied the ban to call for the elimination of nuclear weapons, including the UK’s Trident submarines.
His interview took place at the International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, using a live phone link between a Glasgow cinema and St George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem.
After a brief film of Vanunu reading a poem entitled I Am Your Spy, which he wrote in 1987 while in jail, the man who is an icon to many anti-nuclear campaigners and a traitor to many Israelis said he would not accede to the conditions imposed on him, but hoped they would not be enforced.
“Nothing happened when I gave an interview to the BBC. All I am doing is repeating the same message I did 18 years ago and speaking out about human rights. I think the Israel government is realising these restrictions are not acceptable,” he said.
Asked about the honeytrap operation in which a US-based Mossad agent, known only as Cindy, lured him to Rome in 1986, he claimed agents from many security services had been involved. He said: “Eighteen years ago in London, the Sunday Times was ready to publish the information I had given them but, before they could, Israeli spies sent a woman from the US who talked me back to Rome.
“Mossad spies kidnapped me and drugged me, but it was a cohort of spies, from France, England, Israel, Italy, the US and others. They wanted to silence me.”
Vanunu said he had kept his spirits up during his 18-year sentence, 11 of which were spent in solitary, through sheer determination to be free and by keeping mentally active. “I exercised every day, reading, training and listening to opera, watching TV and reading letters from many friends.”
He called for the abolition of nuclear weapons, saying: “I know very well that Scottish people are acting and working against nuclear weapons. I want to send them my encouragement. Scotland should reject Trident submarines. There is no justification for nuclear submarines, England does not have any enemies to justify possessing them.”
He also criticised Israeli president Ariel Sharon and the security barrier being built around the occupied territories. “Israel is still very dangerous. The intifada operated by Sharon is proving Israel doesn’t want peace and is not interested in solving the Palestinian problem.
“The walls are a symbol that Israel doesn’t want peace. There is no future hope of peace for Palestinians who are imprisoned by this wall without committing any crime.
“The world should wake up and should press Israel to destroy these walls,” he said.
He called for people to support him, saying: “I hope you can do all that you can by raising my case in the UK parliament, to raise my case with [Prime Minister] Tony Blair and [Foreign Secretary] Jack Straw and to demand Israel respects my human rights as a human being to move, to leave the country and to write and speak to foreigners.”