MORDECHAI VANUNU 'vindicated' by Olmert nuke remark; spent 18 yrs. in jail.

Mordechai Vanunu spent 18 years in prison for exposing the secrets of Dimona.

Atomic Mole Vanunu Hopes for an End to Hypocrisy

By Alexander Schwabe

Mordechai Vanunu spent 18 years in prison for revealing secrets about Israel's nuclear program. With Prime Minister Ehud Olmert apparently spilling the beans, he now feels vindicated, he told SPIEGEL ONLINE in an interview.

"So what else is new?" That seems to be the laconic reaction of many in the world to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's seeming admission over the weekend that Israel possesses nuclear weapons. For Mordechai Vanunu, a former employee at Israel's Dimona nuclear complex in the Negev Desert, Olmert's slip-up is little more than an example of the "absurdity of political life" in Israel, he told SPIEGEL ONLINE in an interview on Tuesday.

Vanunu was the source for an exhaustive 1986 story in the Sunday Times about Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal. Even as Israel officially denied the story, the country's secret service, the Mossad, arrested Vanunu and he ultimately spent 18 years in prison for treason -- 11 of them in solitary confinement. Now, it looks as though Israel's prime minister himself has let the cat out of the bag.

Vanunu, who was released from prison in 2004 and lives in a Christian convent in Jerusalem, is still in no way a free man. He is not allowed to leave the country, has frequently been placed under house arrest and is prohibited from having contact with foreigners and from giving interviews. But Olmert's comments during an interview with a German television station over the weekend -- in which he seemed to lump Israel together with nuclear powers Russia, France and the US -- has given cause for Vanunu to ignore the prohibition.

"If the prime minister has said it, why should I not be allowed to say it?" he asks. In any case, everyone else already knows what Olmert now seems to have admitted, Vanunu says. >>>cont

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