JERUSALEM: ASHER VANUNU SPEAKS ABOUT HIS BROTHERS RELEASE FROM SOLITARY CONFINEMENT.

Record ID: 917231

  • Title: JERUSALEM: ASHER VANUNU SPEAKS ABOUT HIS BROTHERS RELEASE FROM SOLITARY CONFINEMENT.
  • Date: 13th March 1998
  • Summary: JERSUALEM (MARCH 13, 1998) (RTV - ACCESS ALL) 1. MCU: ASHER VANUNU, BROTHER OF MORDECHAI VANUNU, SPEAKING TO REPORTER. 0.05 2. CU: ASHER SAYING HE BELIEVES THAT (MORDECHAI) IS VERY RELIEVED AND HAPPY, AND THAT FROM NOW ON HE WILL BE REGARDED AS A NORMAL PRISONER..SINCE HE HAS SERVED TWO-THIRDS OF HIS PUNISHMENT HE MAY BE RELEASED, WE ARE HOPEFUL FOR REL
  • Embargoed: 23rd December 2016 20:14
  • Keywords:
  • Location: JERUSALEM
  • City:
  • Country: Israel
  • Reuters ID: LVA6NEU2FHAXG9NSFUP1SCNMOF4I
  • Aspect Ratio: 4:3
  • Story Text: The brother of Israeli nuclear spy, Mordechai Vanunu, has spoken about his siblings' release from twelve years of solitary confinement.

    Israel said on Friday (March 13) it had allowed nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu out of solitary confinement after 12 years and his supporters said they hoped the move could lead to his early release from prison.

    The Justice Ministry said Vanunu, 43, was able for the first time on Thursday to mix with other prisoners at the jail in Ashkelon where he is serving an 18-year sentence for espionage.

    A ministry statement said the decision was taken after consultations with security officials and psychiatrists who had argued that "extended isolation would damage his mental state".

    Vanunu's brother Asher and parliamentarian Yossi Katz, who had pressed for an end to Vanunu's solitary confinement, both said the authorities should now take the next step and free him when he becomes eligible for parole in April.

    "In another month he will have completed two thirds of his sentence...Even the authorities say there is no risk to state security which leads to the conclusion that he should be released," Asher Vanunu told Reuters.

    "We will have to go on fighting for his release.It won't be easy but I believe it will happen in the not too distant future." Vanunu, a former low-level technician at the Dimona nuclear plant in the southern Negev Desert, blew the lid on Israel's nuclear arms programme in 1986 when he provided information and photographs to the Sunday Times newspaper in London.

    A female "honey trap" agent of the Mossad spy service lured him from London to Rome, where he was abducted and shipped back to Israel to stand trial for revealing state secrets.

    His only contact with the outside world since then has been through the bars of his three-metre by two-metre (10 feet by seven feet) cell during fortnightly visits by his brothers and meetings with occasional other visitors.

    Foreign human rights groups have long pressed for Vanunu's release from solitary confinement on the grounds that it constituted cruel and vindictive punishment.

    Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik asked that he be freed when he met Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Oslo last week, Katz said.

    Both Asher and Katz said he believed foreign pressure had helped ease Vanunu's terms of imprisonment.

    Under the relaxed terms of his confinement, Vanunu will now be able to mix with common prisoners though limits will apply on visits, telephone calls and censoring of letters.

    Asher Vanunu said his brother would stay in his existing cell, though the door was now open all day, and that he had asked to be moved to an open prison in central Israel.

    Israeli security officials had long opposed ending Vanunu's solitary confinement, arguing that he could spill more secrets.

    The Sunday Times concluded from Vanunu that Israel had made as many as 200 nuclear bombs at Dimona, built by the French in the 1950s.

    Israel initially called Dimona a textile factory and later a non-military plant.Under a policy of deliberate ambiguity about its atomic arms potential that continues to this day, it has never confirmed or denied it has nuclear weapons.Some analysts have said Israel has a ready-to-use arsenal of up to 100 nuclear weapons.


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