'Freed' Vanunu faces a life sentence

After serving 18 years behind bars for revealing classified secrets to the world, Mordechai Vanunu, will close the door on his prison cell but he will not be a free man.

Vanunu, now 49, was a former technician at Israel’s top secret Dimona nuclear facility in the southern Negev desert when he decided to blow the cover off the country’s weapons programme in 1986.

After fleeing to Sydney, then London, where he told his story to Sunday Times reporter Peter Houman, Vanunu was ensnared in a ‘honey trap’ sting by a female Mossad spy who lured him to Rome.

As he waited anxiously for the article to appear, he befriended a blonde woman calling herself Cindy, who persuaded him to fly to the Italian capital with her for a holiday.

When he entered an apartment in the city centre, he was seized by Israeli agents,

drugged, gagged and bound, and smuggled back to Israel - reportedly inside a shipping crate - where he was convicted of treason and espionage at a secret trial.

His capture was exactly the scenario the journalist Houman had feared. He had warned Vanunu, saying the identity of the woman had to be checked out.

After spending 12 of his 18 years in jail in solitary confinement, true freedom is a remote as ever for the man who revealed that Israel had built an arsenal of more than 200 atomic bombs at the Dimona site.

Observers believe that Vanunu must be carrying more secrets and is determined to reveal them as this is the only explanation for the severe restrictions that Israel is going to place on him, using laws that were enforced by the British Mandate authorities in the years before the establishment of the Jewish State in 1948.

Using State of Emergency regulations passed in 1945, Vanunu can choose in which city or town he wants to reside. But he will not be allowed out of the municipal boundaries without the prior permission of the local police.

"I can’t believe what they have decided to do to my life after I’ve spent 18 years in prison," he told his brother Meir in their last meeting in Israel’s Ashkelon prison, before his release scheduled for Wednesday. "Up to the last minute, I still thought that they would let me go away from here."

He had hoped to move to the United States, where a couple succeeded in legally adopting him. But Vanunu knows he cannot dream of making a new home abroad. The authorities have decided to ban him from approaching any land border crossing, port or the country’s international airport.

His Israeli passport was confiscated, and he cannot seek asylum elsewhere, for he is banned from going near any foreign embassies in Israel.

At the same time, he has been denied his request to renounce his Israeli citizenship.

Speaking to foreign journalists, the crime for which he was sent to jail, is also out of the question. Contact with any foreign citizens - even by telephone, fax or e-mail - is forbidden. All of his movements and communications will be closely monitored.

He has strong reason to obey the restrictions, which are expected to be renewed every six months. He has been warned that any violations are likely to see him placed on trial.

The final set of restrictions will be determined today when Vanunu appears before a tribunal to appeal against them. There seems little prospect that he will have them overturned.

He became a symbol for the international peace movement. He has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, and a long-running campaign has sought his release.

But he is a despised figure in Israel. If he has any supporters at all, they are largely on the extreme political left.

His public opponents include the Opposition Labour Party leader, Shimon Peres. Peres, the former Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner, is among those who regard Vanunu as one of the most dangerous enemies of the Jewish State.

Peres hails as one of his main achievements, the development of the Israeli defence industries and its nuclear power programme. It was Peres who

ordered that Vanunu be kidnapped and brought home.

While Vanunu is hailed by his supporters overseas as a man with a mission against programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction,

observers in Israel have pointed out the word ‘whistleblower’ does not even translate into Hebrew, being reduced to the less praiseworthy ‘informer’, or worse, the colloquial term ‘shtinker’.

Vanunu has even been disowned by his Rabbi father, after converting to Christianity while living in Australia.

Vanunu moved there after quitting his job at the nuclear facility and he was eventually baptised by an Anglican, Rev Dave Smith, in Sydney. The pastor has written to him every month since his incarceration and is among those flying to Israel in what will be a vain attempt to greet his old friend.

Born in 1954 in Marrakesh, Morocco, into a large and deeply religious Jewish family which emigrated to Israel in 1963, Vanunu served for three years in the sappers’ unit of the Israeli Defence Force after he left school.

He held the rank of sergeant and was given an honourable discharge. He then became a technician at the nuclear reactor centre in Dimona. He worked there from 1976 to 1985, when he was made redundant.

Vanunu’s other foreign supporters, including such celebrities as the British actress Susannah York, as well as the reporter Houman, will also be denied any audience with him.

Houman has felt a personal responsibility for Vanunu’s fate and can hardly believe they will never be able to speak to each other again.

"This is a terrible scandal," Houman said. "We don’t want to cause him any problems. If I reach the conclusion that I am putting him at risk, I’ll give up on the meeting. But this is an outrage. Imagine, I would not even be able to shake his hand."