Via Reuters:
Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu is contesting a new jail six-month sentence received for maintaining unauthorized ties with foreigners after he completed an 18-year prison term for treason (blowing the whistle on the development of nuclear weapons), his lawyer said on Monday.
The unauthorized ties were specifically speaking with reporters and writing in Internet chatrooms on the topics of human rights, freedom and a nuclear-free world, communications violating the terms of his parole from an Israeli prison.
Most of his prison sentence was spent in solitary confinement, conditions that human rights organisations have condemned on humanitarian grounds.
The government's refusal to let Vanunu leave Israel is not popular with many citizens of Israel. See Haaretz' Let Him Go Already.
Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu is contesting a new jail six-month sentence received for maintaining unauthorized ties with foreigners after he completed an 18-year prison term for treason (blowing the whistle on the development of nuclear weapons), his lawyer said on Monday.
The unauthorized ties were specifically speaking with reporters and writing in Internet chatrooms on the topics of human rights, freedom and a nuclear-free world, communications violating the terms of his parole from an Israeli prison.
Most of his prison sentence was spent in solitary confinement, conditions that human rights organisations have condemned on humanitarian grounds.
The government's refusal to let Vanunu leave Israel is not popular with many citizens of Israel. See Haaretz' Let Him Go Already.
Attorney Avigdor Feldman said that Vanunu had filed an appeal on Sunday with the district court in Jerusalem, where a lower court sentenced him to six months behind bars in July.
"The immediate significance is that my client will not be going back to jail any time soon," Feldman told Reuters, adding that he expected a decision on the appeal within three months.
Vanunu was first imprisoned in 1986 after giving a tell-all interview to a British newspaper about his work as a mid-level technician at Israel's main atomic reactor outside the southern desert town of Dimona. The disclosures all but blew away the iron-clad secrecy around Israel's assumed atomic arsenal.
Vanunu was freed in 2004 but barred indefinitely from leaving Israel by order of defense officials who argued that he had more state secrets to spill. Vanunu, 52, has denied that.
Under the terms of his release, Vanunu was also required to seek official permission for contacts with foreigners. Several unauthorized interviews he gave to international media about Israel's nuclear program landed him back in court.
Israel neither confirms nor denies having the Middle East's only atomic weapons under a policy of "strategic ambiguity" billed as warding off enemies while avoiding arms races.
Should the Jerusalem District Court rule against Vanunu's appeal, he could turn to the Supreme Court, Feldman said. However, the Supreme Court has already rejected a petition by Vanunu to overturn the travel ban imposed on him by the state.
A Jewish convert to Christianity, Vanunu argues that by refusing international inspections at the Dimona reactor Israel inflames regional tensions and risks a "second Holocaust".
"The immediate significance is that my client will not be going back to jail any time soon," Feldman told Reuters, adding that he expected a decision on the appeal within three months.
Vanunu was first imprisoned in 1986 after giving a tell-all interview to a British newspaper about his work as a mid-level technician at Israel's main atomic reactor outside the southern desert town of Dimona. The disclosures all but blew away the iron-clad secrecy around Israel's assumed atomic arsenal.
Vanunu was freed in 2004 but barred indefinitely from leaving Israel by order of defense officials who argued that he had more state secrets to spill. Vanunu, 52, has denied that.
Under the terms of his release, Vanunu was also required to seek official permission for contacts with foreigners. Several unauthorized interviews he gave to international media about Israel's nuclear program landed him back in court.
Israel neither confirms nor denies having the Middle East's only atomic weapons under a policy of "strategic ambiguity" billed as warding off enemies while avoiding arms races.
Should the Jerusalem District Court rule against Vanunu's appeal, he could turn to the Supreme Court, Feldman said. However, the Supreme Court has already rejected a petition by Vanunu to overturn the travel ban imposed on him by the state.
A Jewish convert to Christianity, Vanunu argues that by refusing international inspections at the Dimona reactor Israel inflames regional tensions and risks a "second Holocaust".
Jerusalem District Court had held off implementing July's sentence pending a decision by Vanunu on whether to appeal.
###
No comments:
Post a Comment