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TEL AVIV, April 20: Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu will be barred from leaving Israel for a year to prevent him from spilling more state secrets once he completes his 18-year jail term on Wednesday.
The ban was due to "a tangible danger... that Vanunu wishes to divulge state secrets, secrets that he has not yet divulged and which have not been previously published," a Defence Ministry statement said.
Mr Vanunu's brothers voiced fears for his safety during the year he will be forced to stay in Israel, where the former nuclear technician is widely despised as a traitor for revealing Israel's nuclear secrets to a British newspaper.
Appealing to Britain to offer Mr Vanunu sanctuary, his brother Meir told BBC radio: "If something happens to my brother, the blood and responsibility... is also on the British government."
Mr Vanunu's brothers rented him a luxury seaside apartment in Jaffa, southern Tel Aviv, close to a church where the 49-year-old Christian convert can attend prayers. The location was supposed to have been secret but was leaked to the media.
Mr Vanunu will be required to tell police if he stays overnight anywhere else. He must not approach border exits or talk to foreigners without prior approval for at least six months. Security services will be keeping a close eye on Mr Vanunu.
"The keys are in Vanunu's hands. The reissuance of the restrictions depends on the steps he takes, on his conduct and on future violations of the law," the Defence Ministry said.
Mr Vanunu was jailed in 1986 for treason after disclosing information to Britain's Sunday Times which led analysts to conclude Israel had produced more than 100 nuclear warheads. Israeli secret service agents abducted Mr Vanunu from Rome where he was lured from London by a blonde Mossad agent named "Cindy" in a "honey trap" operation.
ISRAEL EMBARRASSED: Mr Vanunu's revelations embarrassed Israel which has maintained a strategic ambiguity over its nuclear programme in an attempt to ward off its foes while avoiding a regional arms race.
Security officials say Mr Vanunu will be bound by a non-disclosure agreement he signed when he was hired to work at the Dimona reactor in 1976. Israel has kept the nuclear reactor in Dimona - where Mr Vanunu worked for nine years until he was fired in 1985 - closed to international inspection.
The now grey-haired Vanunu, disowned by most of his family, denies having anything more to reveal about Israel's nuclear programme, but says he wants to campaign against it. Waving signs saying "Peace Hero", about 50 supporters gathered outside the Shikma Prison in the city of Ashkelon where Mr Vanunu is being held to celebrate his release.
Supporters say the Israeli restrictions are an attempt to gag what they call Mr Vanunu's legitimate anti-nuclear activism. "It's a gross violation of human rights," said British actress Susannah York, one of scores of anti-nuclear campaigners who have come from abroad.
Asher Vanunu accused the authorities of orchestrating a smear campaign against his brother after television stations aired an audio tape of Mr Vanunu talking to security officers. In the tape Mr Vanunu, who spent 12 years in solitary confinement, incensed many Israelis by saying the Dimona reactor should be destroyed, that the Jewish state should not exist and that Judaism is a backward religion.
The list of prohibitions slapped on Mr Vanunu was less severe than those originally proposed after justice officials concluded they were illegal and could be overturned by the Supreme Court.
Speaking out for the restrictions, Shimon Peres, the founder of Israel's atomic programme, told Army Radio: "Vanunu violated norms and betrayed his country... This is justice". -Reuters
