Ashkelon, Israel
After 18 years in prison, including 11 in solitary confinement, the man who told the world about Israel’s alleged nuclear weapons program was scheduled to be released this week. In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu was a technician at Israel’s nuclear plant in Dimona when he told the London Sunday Times that the plant was producing nuclear weapons. He was promptly arrested by Mossad agents and sentenced in a secret trial. “I am neither a traitor nor a spy,” Vanunu said in an interview released this week. “I only wanted the world to know what was happening.” Vanunu, who has converted to Christianity, is forbidden to leave Israel or approach foreign embassies, out of concern that he may seek political asylum.
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