Vanunu guilty of violating court order
The Jerusalem Magistrate's Court convicted nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu on 14 counts of violating a court order to avoid contact with foreign journalists.
He was also convicted of attempting to travel from Jerusalem to Bethlehem without permission.
In his verdict, the judge wrote that Vanunu was well aware of the order but flagrantly violated it.
Vanunu told reporters that the verdict was
"additional proof that there is no democracy in Israel," adding that all he wanted was to move freely and to leave Israel.
"I want to leave this country," he said. "I want to be free."
In 1986, Vanunu, a former technician at Israel's main nuclear reactor, gave pictures and documents to the London-based Sunday Times that led experts to conclude that Israel had a sizeable nuclear weapons arsenal, ranking it sixth in the world. Vanunu served an 18-year prison term for his disclosures.
Mordechai Vanunu has been characterized by some as a whistleblower[10] [11] for revealing Israel's clandestine nuclear program to the British press in 1986.
Israel and weapons of mass destruction
1.0 Nuclear weapons
The Israeli government refuses to officially confirm or deny that it has a nuclear weapon program, and has an unofficial but rigidly enforced policy of deliberate ambiguity, saying only that it would not be the first to "introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East".[1]Israel is widely believed to be one of four nuclear-armed countries not recognized as a Nuclear Weapons State by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the other three being India, Pakistan and North Korea.[2]
In a December 2006 interview, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Iran aspires
"to have a nuclear weapon as America, France, Israel and Russia."[3]Olmert's office later said that the quote was taken out of context, in other parts of the interview, Olmert refused to confirm or deny Israel's nuclear weapon status.[4]
- 1.1 Development program
- 1.2 Nuclear weapons capability
- 1.3 Timetable of Estimates of the Israeli Nuclear Arsenal
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