Immediate Solidarity Actions Required

For more information go to the following web site: nonviolence.org.

Mordechai Vanunu was arrested this morning in his room at St. George’s Cathedral in East Jerusalem, by a huge police force (about 30 armed officers). The pretext for his arrest: Vanunu violated the Draconian restrictions that were imposed on him when he was released from prison in April, by giving interviews to foreign media.

The attempt to silence Mordechai Vanunu on this of all days, is an attempt to bury Israel’s secret nuclear arsenal together with Yasser Arafat. While the world media and attention are focused on the burial of the Palestinian leader, the Israeli government is attempting to disappear the nuclear whistleblower, whose only crime is revealing the terrible truth that Israel is trying to hide: weapons of mass destruction that are concealed from Israeli citizens and from the world.

Mordechai Vanunu is expected to be brought to court on Friday morning, November 12. His supporters will demonstrate outside the courthouse. Details will be sent out later today.

Vanunu worked in Israel’s nuclear program and in the 1980’s blew the whistle on Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program. Vanunu served in the Israeli army and then went to work as a young man in the Dimona nuclear “research center” in the Negev Desert near his home at Beersheba. The facility harbored an underground plutonium separation plant operated in strictest secrecy. As the years went by he grew increasingly troubled as he realized his work was part of Israel’s nuclear bomb program. In 1985, before leaving Dimona, he took extensive photographs inside the factory in order to document the truth for his fellow citizens and the entire world. Vanunu’s story, published in London’s Sunday Times on October 5, 1986, gave the world its first authoritative confirmation that tiny Israel had become a major nuclear weapons power, with material for as many as 200 nuclear warheads of advanced design. Mordecai was released from Israel’s prisons in April 2004 after spending 18 years in prison.

Please contact the officials of Israel’s government to demand the immediate release of Mordecai:

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
3 Kaplan St.
Hakirya, Jerusalem 91007
Fax: +972 2 566 4838
Email: rohm at pmo.gov.il

Tommy Lapid
Minister of Justice
29 Salah al-Din St.
Jerusalem 91010
Fax: +972 2 628 5438
Email: sar at justice.gov.il

Tzahi Hanegbi
Minister of Internal Security
P.O. Box 18182
Jerusalem 91181
Fax: +972 2 581 1832
Email: sar at mops.gov.il

Contact the Israeli Embassy in
Washington
to demand his release:
phone: 202-364-5500
Email: ambassador_sec at israelemb.org
fax: 202-364-5607

Public & Interreligious Affairs
v.(202) 364-5542

Political Department
(202)364-5581/2

Press Office
(202) 364-5538

Ambassador of Israel
3514 International Drive NW
Washington DC 20008