Jerusalem – Mordechai Vanunu, released in 2004 after 18 years in prison for leaking Israeli nuclear secrets, will serve another three months behind bars after refusing to carry out community service, a court ruled on Tuesday.
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A panel of High Court Judges returned the 56-year-old Moroccan-born Israeli to jail after he failed to fulfill a community service order, punishment for breaching his parole terms by contacting foreigners without authorization.
The former nuclear technician had asked to be assigned community duties in Arab-majority East Jerusalem after claiming he risked attack by angry Israelis, many of whom see him as a traitor, in the city’s Jewish-populated west.
When judges rejected his request, he refused to carry out the sentence.
Prosecutors said in a statement that they had no option but to jail Vanunu, who spent 11 years in solitary confinement, as he had breached all of the orders served against him.
This is not the first time Vanunu has returned to prison since 2004. In 2007 a court shocked defense lawyers, who had expected a suspended sentence, by jailing him for six months – also for a breach of parole terms.
The unusually harsh sentence prompted widespread international condemnation, including from Amnesty International, which described Vanunu as a “prisoner of conscience”.
Vanunu was first imprisoned in 1986, when he was drugged and kidnapped by Mossad agents in Rome after giving an interview to the British Sunday Times newspaper.
They should have killed him and made it look like an accident. Freak.
They should throw this bum who converted to Christianity in jail and let him roit in hell.
And in our country Hillary divulges the exact number of nukes we have, yet she is not in jail. Tell me this country isn’t backwards.
They should have kept him in jail years ago and never let him out. Traitor!!!
This guy just doesn’t get it – he will not win
you obviously have no ability to think independently! Mordechai did a great thing, Israel is trying to hide from it’s own shadow, constantly worried about world opinion.
nuclear weapons is what has protected Israel and will continue to do so, Israel should not be afraid of letting the world know that they have them!
the Israeli government – and as a result the entire nation of Israel – have absolutely no backbone! no guts, and really – no identity.
He has totally cut his soul off from Jewish people.
lock him up and thro away the key! let him rot in hell!
Vanunu was imnprisoned for 18 years, mostly in solitary confinement. He survived years of mental and physical torture. What more does the Israeli government want from him? Why won’t they just let him leave Israel, as he wishes to? I have no use for what he did, but he paid his debt to society. Enough is enough. How relevant could his nuclear secrets be, after nearly 25 years? This is the same excuse that we’ve heard about Jonathan Pollard; that is, he still knows sensitive classified information, and if he is released, there would be a risk that additional critical information would be released. Both arguments (pertaining to Pollard and Vanunu) are fallacies, as classified information and codes, have long been updated and changed.
He is a traitor the gravity of whose crime cannot be expressed as “he revealed state secrets” but that he attempted to deprive his people of their most potent defensive weapon on which the survival of the millions of our people may depend.
We made a very serious error by not putting him to death, not pretending it was an accident, but publicly and righteously.
1) It is consistent with our Torah.
2) Any well-adjusted society would do just that.
It is never too late to correct such an error.
Vanunu is not a “whistleblower” or a “prisoner of conscience”. He is a traitor, plain and simple. He was known to be a defender of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program when Israel destroyed it in 1983, so his actions were not motivated by a disdain for nuclear weapons. His actions were solely motivated by his hatred of the Jewish people and his conversion to Christianity proves that.
Freekin morracan cyco path!! He spent more of his life behind bars than in front of?? Wow that’s a weird thing to say!!