Among all the talk of whistleblowers as heroes – Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, the Panama Papers leaker – one is rarely mentioned. Mordechai Vanunu came to Britain in 1986 to tell the Sunday Times the story of the nuclear weapons facility at Dimona in the Negev desert in southern Israel. Walking around London, frustrated by the time the newspaper seemed to be taking to run his story, he was lured by “Cindy”, a woman from Mossad. They flew together to Italy where he was kidnapped, drugged, and smuggled out of the country to Israel. He was sentenced to 18 years in jail for revealing details of Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons programme. He spent more than a decade in solitary confinement. He was released in 2004 but banned from speaking to foreigners without official permission, and prevented from leaving the country. Last Sunday Vanunu, now 61, was charged with violating the terms of his release.
Guardian 11th May 2016 read more »