Vanunu refused letters from his time in prison

international | rights, freedoms and repression | news report

Tuesday July 26, 2005 00:48

by Justin Morahan - Peace People

Supreme Court of Israel says No

"We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverable for ourselves and for others."
(Goethe)

The Supreme Court of Israel has today refused to return letters from his time in prison to whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu. The letters are his private property. They were confiscated by the Israeli Secret Service.

Mordechai spent eighteen years in prison for revealing Israel's nuclear secrets to the world. The first eleven and a half years were in solitary confinement.

Israel even still has a policy of "ambiguity" on its nuclear weapons, refusing to either confirm or deny their existence. The International Atomic Agency cannot inspect Dimona nuclear plant whenever they visit Israel. They are allowed, sometimes even forced, to inspect installations in other countries, but not in Israel. Israel is an exception, and the man who revealed the truth about its weapons of mass destruction is still deprived of rights and freedoms 15 months after his release from his savage sentence.

It would appear that the cruel restrictions placed on Mordechai Vanunu's freedom since his prison sentence ended in April 2004 may be another attempt on the part of Israel to silence all voices that challenge or give the lie to their "ambiguity" policy.

But the dogs in the street know of Israel's nuclear arsenal. In 1997 there were more than 400 deliverable nuclear and thermonuclear weapons in Israel (according to Colonel Warner D. “Rocky” Farr of the US Army). http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/farr.htm

After the court case Mordechai Vanunu said: "There is no justice in Israel". But his spirit remains indomitable.

"Stone walls do not a prison make
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage

If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free.
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty." - R Lovelace.

(Poem chosen by Mordechai Vanunu for hs new website)
http://www.serve.com/vanunu/

Comments (1 of 1)

in the media...

by redjade

Tue Jul 26, 2005 17:51

No letters for Vanunu

Vanunu petitioned the court to receive copies of the letters he wrote during his 17 year imprisonment for exposing Israel's nuclear weapons program.

During this time he wrote 2,543 letters, which were censored before they were sent friends and supporters throughout the world. Vanunu kept copies and marked the words and sentences that were censored.

Vanunu claims in his petition that the director of Shikma Prison in Ashkelon, where he served his sentence, promised him that all the documents that were taken away from him will be checked and returned to him, but it did not happen.

more at
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3117681,00.html

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Court rules that Vanunu cannot retrieve prison-era letters

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/604495.html

Vanunu's representative, attorney Dan Yakir from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, suggested that the state also censor the copies of the letters. But the justices upheld the state's claim that the volume of letters and the difficulty of reading them would make the censoring a "huge task - time, money and manpower-wise."