I doubt this guy has anyway to get classified material. He just got out of prision 7 months ago !! They just arrested him because he is giving interviews with the press.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/ne...israel_vanunu_arrested
http://story.news.yahoo.com/ne...israel_vanunu_arrested
Israeli Nuclear Whistle Blower Arrested
By GAVIN RABINOWITZ, Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM - Heavily armed police commandos stormed a Jerusalem church compound and arrested nuclear whistle blower Mordechai Vanunu on Thursday, drawing harsh condemnation from the Anglican Church to which he belongs.
Vanunu, who was released seven months ago after completing an 18-year prison sentence for treason, was arrested on suspicion of revealing classified information, police said.
He was taken before a magistrate, who ordered him confined to the church hostel under house arrest for seven days.
"This is a disgrace to Israeli democracy!" Vanunu shouted to journalists as he was led into court. "They want to punish me again. They cannot punish me twice. I suffered 18 years in prison. I have the right to be free."
Analysts said the arrest of Vanunu ? who has repeatedly defied orders not to give interviews ? may be an Israeli attempt to suppress discussion of its nuclear program at a time of increasing international efforts to block Iran from going nuclear.
Vanunu, 49, was released from prison in April after spending much of his prison sentence in solitary confinement for disclosing secrets he learned as a technician at the Israeli nuclear reactor in the southern town of Dimona in the 1980s.
About 20 police commandos wearing bulletproof vests and wielding machine guns burst into the walled compound of St. George's Anglican church where Vanunu had taken sanctuary upon his release, arresting him as he ate breakfast.
Police ransacked Vanunu's room and removed his computer and papers. Police spokesman Gil Kleiman declined to discuss what information Vanunu is suspected of revealing or to whom.
"In the 100 years of the cathedral's history, such an event has never taken place," Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal said in a letter to Anglican leaders.
"This type of entry into a sacred space must not be tolerated ... and we call for the respect of sacred places in the Land of the Holy One," he wrote in the letter, which also was sent to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
The Archbishop of Wales, Barry Morgan, condemned Israel in a statement for this "deliberately provocative act today in sending armed police officers into St. George's Anglican Cathedral."
A spokesman for Sharon, Raanan Gissin, dismissed the church protest, saying police had the right to search wherever necessary.
"It was all done according to the law under the recommendation of the attorney general," Gissin said.
Vanunu has acknowledged violating his release arrangement, which barred him from meeting foreigners or discussing his work at Dimona, but he said he had no more classified information to reveal.
"I don't have any secrets," he said Thursday. "I cannot invent new secrets. Remember, these secrets are now 19 or 20 years old."
Vanunu was convicted in 1988 for divulging information and pictures of the Dimona reactor. The details, published in London's Sunday Times, led experts to conclude that Israel has the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, including hundreds of warheads.
Israel has followed a policy of nuclear ambiguity, neither confirming nor denying it has nuclear weapons.
Shlomo Aronson, a professor at the Hebrew University and expert on Israel's nuclear program, said Thursday's raid may have been designed to gag Vanunu, whose repeated interviews on Israel's nuclear program were making it difficult to focus international attention on Iran's program.
"At the moment there is progress in dealing with Iran. Vanunu is harming the war against the Iranian bomb by creating a linkage with Israel's program," Aronson said.
Britain, France and Germany held intensive talks in recent days, trying to persuade Iran to suspend activities that could help make atomic bombs.
While Iran insists it only wants to generate nuclear power, the United States and Israel have accused it of trying to build nuclear weapons. President Bush labeled Iran part of an "axis of evil" with North Korea (news - web sites) and prewar Iraq.
Vanunu, a convert to Christianity, became a hero to peace activists for his role in unveiling Israel's nuclear program.
Peter Hounam, the Sunday Times journalist who published Vanunu's nuclear revelations, accused the Israeli authorities of using Thursday's death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) to try to divert attention from the arrest of Vanunu.
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