Scientists launch appeal to free Mordechai Vanunu
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Linus Pauling and Carl Sagan are among the 27 world-renowned scientists (including 18 Nobel laureates) who have launched an appeal on behalf of Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear technician convicted by an Israeli tribunal of treason and aggravated espionage and sentenced by the court to 18 years.
Vanunu has been held in solitary confinement since his kidnapping from Italy by the Mossad, Israel's secret service, 19 months ago.
Vanunu provided the Sunday Times of London with information and photographs which led the paper to conclude that Israel had built hydrogen bombs, stockpiled as many as 200 nuclear weapons, and had a long-range delivery system capable of reaching all parts of the Arab world and the borders of the Soviet Union.
Israel, the world's sixth-ranking nuclear power, has always refused to acknowledge its nuclear weapons capability, insisting that the facility at Dimona, where Vanunu worked for nine years, was merely a nuclear power plant providing electricity.
The scientists launching the appeal, many of them nuclear physicists and some of whom developed the first atomic bomb, expressed their support for Mordechai Vanunu as a man of conscience moved by the danger of the spread of nuclear weapons to new arenas of conflict.
Vanunu's conviction will be appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Vanunu's brother, Mair, has sought political asylum in England, after the Israeli government threatened to arrest him for making public information surrounding Vanunu's kidnapping by the Mossad.