Israel arrests nuclear whistleblower Vanunu.

This will be off the mainstream press radar. Vanunu has been severely restricted as to what he may do since his release from prison and he often breaks the rules. Israel manages to keep quiet about its own nuclear arsenal. All press will be about Iran which of course does not yet have any such weapons but it is taken for granted that it is not allowable that it should ever have them either. Of course India and even Pakistan have them already too! This is from antiwar.com.


Israeli police arrest nuclear whistleblower Vanunu

Israeli police arrest nuclear whistleblower Vanunu for violating terms of prison release

AMY TEIBEL
AP News

Dec 29, 2009 09:49 EST

Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu was ordered to be put under house arrest Tuesday after being charged with violating a condition of his 2004 release from an Israeli prison.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said Vanunu met with "a number of foreigners," something he was ordered not to do for fear he might divulge classified information.

Vanunu, who has been charged with violating this order before, flashed a "V" sign and unleashed a rambling tirade against the "impotent" Jewish state as he entered a Jerusalem court.

His lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, said Vanunu was arrested because he has a Norwegian girlfriend whom police have already interrogated.

A court spokesman said Vanunu would be released from jail Tuesday evening and was ordered to stay under house arrest through Thursday.

Vanunu was a former low-level technician at an Israeli nuclear plant who leaked details and pictures of the operation to the Sunday Times of London in 1986.

Israeli intelligence agents kidnapped him in Rome and brought him back to Israel to stand trial. He served 18 years in prison before being freed, but he is not allowed to leave the country.

Upon his release in 2004, Vanunu was banned from leaving the country and having unauthorized contact with foreigners.

Following a policy that it calls "nuclear ambiguity," Israel has never acknowledged or denied having a nuclear weapons program. But experts concluded from the material that Vanunu divulged that Israel had the world's sixth-largest nuclear arsenal.