Vanunu arrested by Israeli police

Vanunu was convicted of treason over his disclosures about Israel's nuclear weapons programme and jailed in 1986.

Strict conditions were imposed on him after release, including a ban on giving interviews to foreign media.

He has denied passing on classified information since his release, and insists that any information he may have is now nearly 20 years old.

However, Vanunu has repeatedly been in contact with journalists and was interviewed on BBC television just over two weeks ago.

Cathedral 'invasion'

The bishop of the Jerusalem church where Vanunu has lived since his release said he saw him seized by between 30 and 50 men, many armed with machine guns.

Anglican Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal told the BBC News website that Vanunu's room had been searched and his mobile phones, laptop, camera and notebooks seized.

The bishop said some Swedish pilgrims visiting St George's Church had been shocked to tears by the police operation.

"They invaded the cathedral close," he said. "Some of them climbed over the fences, others came through the main gate.

"They terrified, terrorised the guests and the pilgrims, none of whom knew why this invasion happened with machine guns."

The bishop said he was "very angry" at the way Vanunu was seized. He was not allowed to speak to him, but was told he was being taken for interrogation.

Police spokesman Gil Kleiman told the Reuters news agency that Vanunu would be charged at a court hearing on Friday.

Israeli trap

There have been suggestions that Vanunu's detention, coming on the day of Yasser Arafat's death, may have been timed to avoid widescale media coverage, says the BBC's Richard Miron in Jerusalem.

Vanunu revealed details of Israel's secret nuclear facilities to a British newspaper in 1986.

Despite Israeli denials, observers declared the country the world's sixth-largest nuclear power.

Before he could reveal more, Vanunu was lured out of hiding in London by a female Israeli secret agent, who persuaded him that she wanted to meet him in Rome.

Once there, Vanunu was overpowered and drugged by other Israeli agents, then shipped back to Israel to be tried in secret.

In an interview after his release, Vanunu said he had acted to prevent a nuclear holocaust.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/4002227.stm

Nuclear whistle blower Mordechai Vanunu was arrested today for allegedly revealing classified information, seven months after he completed an 18-year prison sentence for treason, police said.

Police spokesman Gil Kleiman said Vanunu was detained at his rented rooms in Jerusalem's St. George's church, but declined to discuss the nature of his alleged disclosures or to whom he made them.

"Vanunu was arrested late this morning," Kleiman said, adding that police removed papers and a computer from his rooms.

Vanunu, 49, was released from prison in April after 18 years, much of it in solitary confinement, for disclosing secrets he learned as a technician at the Israeli nuclear reactor in the southern town of Dimona in the 1980s.

He has acknowledged violating his release arrangement which barred him from meeting foreigners or discussing his work at Dimona, but said he had no more classified information to reveal.

Vanunu was convicted in 1988 for divulging information and pictures of the Dimona reactor. The details, published in London's Sunday Times, led experts to conclude that Israel has the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, including hundreds of warheads.

Israel has followed a policy of nuclear ambiguity, neither confirming nor denying it has nuclear weapons.

Vanunu, a convert to Christianity, became a hero to peace activists for his role in unveiling Israel's nuclear program.

Peter Hounam, the Sunday Times journalist who published Vanunu's nuclear revelations, said he was "horrified" by Vanunu's arrest, and accused the Israeli authorities of using Thursday's death of Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat to try to divert attention from it.

"I think they deliberately waited until Arafat died," he told The Associated Press from England. "But I don't think they will succeed because people all over the world will ask why Israel is being so vindictive."

In an AP interview in September, Vanunu said he wanted to replace his Israeli citizenship with a foreign one, perhaps Palestinian.

"In Israel, I am regarded as a traitor ... and since my release they are not respecting my human rights, my freedom of speech my freedom of movement," he said.

He said he planned to continue his anti-nuclear campaign, but he had no more secrets to reveal. "All I knew was published 18 years ago," he said.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=581774

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Seven months after he was released from prison after an 18-year sentence for treason and espionage, Israeli police arrested nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu Thursday morning in Jerusalem on suspicion of passing on confidential information to unauthorized individuals, police said.

Vanunu spent 18 years in an Israeli jail for leaking details of Israel's nuclear program in 1986, court officials said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/11/vanunu.arrest/