This third Thursday of April begins the 8th year after 18 years in prison that Mordechai Vanunu has been under 24/7 surveillance by Israel’s version of America's CIA-FBI: Mossad-Shabbak who have had a vendetta against Vanunu ever since he exposed their lax SECURITY in Israel's 7-story underground WMD Facility in 1986.

Because Vanunu was a good worker, he was cross trained as a technician in many areas of the compartmentalized facility and he was the first employee to realize he was but a cog in the making of weapons of mass destruction. As a matter of conscience he decided to document the facts underground by photographing the evidence.  Vanunu easily obtained the keys to the restricted areas after they had been carelessly left in the shower room by a supervisor. He had already smuggled in a camera and film that he had stashed in his locker. One night he shot 56 photos in top secret locations but did not develop them until ten months later while in Sydney, Australia where he met an investigative journalist from the UK. Peter Hounam broke the photo-story that was published on the front page of the London Sunday Times just as Vanunu was being kidnapped, clubbed, drugged and bound by the Mossad in Rome and flung onto an Israeli ship heading home.

Between 1976 and 1985, Vanunu was employed as a nuclear plant technician and shift manager at the Negev Nuclear Research Center, located in the Negev Desert south of Dimona. Most worldwide intelligence agencies estimate that Israel developed nuclear weapons as early as the 1960s, but the country has intentionally maintained a "policy of deliberate ambiguity", neither acknowledging nor denying that it possesses the weapons.

On 21 April 2004, within moments of Vanunu's release from 18 years in a windowless tomb sized cell-most all of it in solitary he told the world about Israel's SECURITY: Mossad-Shabback and how they controlled the prison guards: 

I met Vanunu for the first time in June 2005, while I was in the midst of writing my first novel but in the moment Vanunu told me the following, I knew I would also finally pursue my childhood dream of being a reporter:

"President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons. Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection.

"When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to '69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them.

"Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year."

On 30 April 2007, the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court, convicted Vanunu on 14 [out of 21] counts of violating a court order prohibiting him from speaking to foreign journalists in 2004. Vanunu was also convicted for traveling the four miles from Jerusalem to Bethlehem when he hoped to attend Christmas Eve mass at the Church of the Nativity, his first Christmas after being released from 18 years in jail [most of it in solitary] on April 21, 2004. 

On 2 July 2007, Israel sentenced Vanunu to six more months in jail for speaking to foreign media in 2004.

On 23 September 2008, the Jerusalem District Court reduced Vanunu’s sentence to three months, "In light of (Vanunu’s) ailing health and the absence of claims that his actions put the country’s security in jeopardy."

In 2010, he served a sentence of 78 days in solitary confinement.

A few weeks after, Vanunu relocated to Tel Aviv where he is “regarded as a Spy, Traitor, Enemy.”

On 4 October 2010, the International League for Human Rights-FIDH/AEDH Germany, announced Vanunu was awarded the 2010 Carl-von-Ossietzky-Medal and an international campaign was launched to assure he be at the Award Ceremony, in Berlin on December 12, 2010. As Israel denied Vanunu the right to attend the ceremony was renamed a protest and went on as planned- but with an empty chair where Vanunu should have been.

On 11 October 2010, Vanunu returned to the Supreme Court seeking to rescind the restrictions that have denied him the right to leave Israel.

Israel DENIED his right to even appeal!

On 29 March 2011, Israel's parliament passed a law that allows courts to revoke the citizenship of anyone with dual citizenship convicted of spying or treason. Vanunu was born and lived in Morocco until he was 9, and time will tell if his legal team will seize this opportunity to seek his deportation back to his homeland.

In 1987 from Ashkelon prison, Vanunu wrote

I Am Your Spy

I am the clerk, the technician, the mechanic, the driver.
They said, Do this, do that, don't look left or right,
don't read the text. Don't look at the whole machine. You
are only responsible for this one bolt. For this one rubber-stamp.
This is your only concern. Don't bother with what is above you.
Don't try to think for us. Go on, drive. Keep going. On, on.

So they thought, the big ones, the smart ones, the futurologists.
There is nothing to fear. Not to worry.
Everything's ticking just fine.
Our little clerk is a diligent worker. He's a simple mechanic.
He's a little man.
Little men's ears don't hear, their eyes don't see.
We have heads, they don't.

Answer them, said he to himself, said the little man,
the man with a head of his own. Who is in charge? Who knows
where this train is going?
Where is their head? I too have a head.
Why do I see the whole engine,
Why do I see the precipice--
is there a driver on this train?

The clerk driver technician mechanic looked up.
He stepped back and saw -- what a monster.
Can't believe it. Rubbed his eyes and -- yes,
it's there all right. I'm all right. I do see
the monster. I'm part of the system.
I signed this form. Only now I am reading the rest of it.

This bolt is part of a bomb. This bolt is me. How
did I fail to see, and how do the others go on
fitting bolts. Who else knows?
Who has seen? Who has heard? -- The emperor really is naked.
I see him. Why me? It's not for me. It's too big.

Rise and cry out. Rise and tell the people. You can.
I, the bolt, the technician, mechanic? -- Yes, you.
You are the secret agent of the people. You are the eyes of the nation.
Agent-spy, tell us what you've seen. Tell us what the insiders, the clever ones, have hidden from us.
Without you, there is only the precipice. Only catastrophe.

I have no choice. I'm a little man, a citizen, one of the people,
but I'll do what I have to. I've heard the voice of my conscience
and there's nowhere to hide.
The world is small, small for Big Brother.
I'm on your mission. I'm doing my duty. Take it from me.

Come and see for yourselves. Lighten my burden. Stop the train.
Get off the train. The next stop -- nuclear disaster. The next book,
the next machine. No. There is no such thing. [1]

Israel's very statehood was contingent upon upholding the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS:

Article 13. -(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

 (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 19. -Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.  Read more...

 One thing for certain is that the longer Israel denies Vanunu his right to leave the state the greater his legend will grow as well as keeping the light shining on -as Vanunu said, "Israel is only a democracy if you are a Jew."- "30 Minutes with Vanunu"

Click here to download entire 30 minute video
(Taped March 24, 2006)
(Windows Media)

Click here to View 30 Minute Video Message on Google Video

13 Minutes with Vanunu : Vanunu updates the world regarding his FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial