Europe Peace Group Voices ‘Profound Shock’ at Vanunu Spy Conviction

A European peace group expressed “profound shock” Thursday at the conviction of Mordechai Vanunu on charges of treason and espionage for disclosing Israeli nuclear secrets.

Vanunu, 34, a former technician at Israel’s nuclear facility, was convicted early Thursday and is scheduled to be sentenced Sunday. His attorney said he plans to appeal.

The Sunday Times of London said in October of 1986 that information provided by Vanunu indicated that Israel had stockpiled as many as 200 nuclear weapons, enough to make it the world’s sixth-ranking nuclear power.

Representatives of the European Peace Movement, who are visiting Israel, issued a statement at a press conference after the verdict was announced, saying that the conviction “amounts to an admission that Vanunu’s revelations were true.”

‘As Night Follows Day’

One of the group, Gideon Spiro, a British member of the European Parliament, said the verdict “clearly recognizes that Israel has nuclear weapons.”

“An Arab bomb will follow an Israeli bomb as clearly as night follows day,” he said.

The peace group, which consists of anti-war activists from a number of European countries and which has nominated Vanunu for the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize, said that “Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons puts great pressure on the Arab states to acquire such weapons for themselves.” This “can only threaten the legitimate interests of all the peoples of the region,” it said.

The group’s statement said Vanunu is not a traitor but “a man who listened to the prompting of his conscience at great personal cost.”

Another member of the European peace group, Glyn Ford, a British Labor Party member of the European Parliament, said the Vanunu incident could affect Israel’s relations with the European Parliament. He said the European Parliament has already delayed an agricultural trade agreement with Israel to protest the way Israeli is dealing with Palestinian unrest in the occupied territories, and that when the question comes up again, the Vanunu case will be taken into account.

A three-judge panel ruled after more than a year of closed-door hearings in the case that Vanunu was guilty of aiding the enemy in wartime--Israel technically remains at war with most of the Arab countries--by collecting secret information with the intention of harming state security, and transferring that information with the same intent.

The conviction carries a maximum sentence of death. However, prosecutor Uzi Chasson said he will seek a sentence of life imprisonment, which in Israel is limited to 20 years.

The case has been considered so sensitive that only one sentence was made public from the judges’ 60-page verdict. It said, “We decided the defendant is guilty on all three counts.”

The public, the press and members of the defendant’s immediate family were barred from the Jerusalem district courtroom where the verdict was read. Vanunu was driven to the court in a white police van with whitewashed windows. He was kept out of sight of a throng of photographers outside the building. The windows of the courthouse were boarded over.

Defense attorney Avigdor Feldman told reporters that his client listened calmly to the verdict. “He didn’t despair,” the lawyer said. “He didn’t fall apart.

“He’s confident we presented a good case, but he’s worried that the odds have been stacked against him from the start. There’s been an atmosphere of guilt with all the attention and the crazy precautions the authorities have taken.”

Feldman had argued that Vanunu disclosed nothing new and that in any event he had acted not to harm Israel but to awaken a nuclear debate in his country.

According to the indictment, Vanunu worked as a technician and operator at Israel’s top-secret Nuclear Research Center near Dimona, in the Negev Desert, from Nov. 2, 1976, until Oct. 27, 1985. He was dismissed, apparently because he had come under suspicion of being pro-Palestinian.

‘Top-Secret Wings’

He left Israel on Jan. 19, 1986, taking with him films and notes concerning the facility’s “top-secret wings,” the indictment said, and provided the Sunday Times with the information and photographs on which it based its article.

Even before the article was published, Vanunu was taken out of Britain by agents of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service.

Details of his capture have never been officially confirmed here. But according to Vanunu’s brother Meir, who subsequently sought political asylum in Britain, the former technician was lured to Rome by a female agent promising sex. The woman is said to have called herself Cindy Hanin, from Florida, but was subsequently identified by the Sunday Times as Cheryl Bentov, an American-born Mossad agent who lived with her husband in the Israeli coastal town of Netanya.

In Rome, Vanunu was reportedly drugged, bound and bundled into the hold of a ship bound for Israel. On Oct. 9, 1986, the government announced without comment that he was back in the country and under arrest.

The Israeli government’s policy has long been to refuse to comment directly on whether it possesses nuclear weapons. It pledges that it will not be the first to “introduce them” into the region. The ambiguity is calculated to deter Israel’s Arab enemies while helping the authorities to evade international controls on its nuclear facility.

The Dimona reactor was built with French help under a 1956 agreement. Former U.S. officials have said that the government described it as a textile factory when first asked about the facility.

Likely to Appeal

Attorney Feldman said he was “certainly disappointed” by the verdict and that he will probably appeal it to the Supreme Court. Vanunu, he said, is ready to continue the legal fight.

In the meantime, he said: “We’ll certainly argue for a light sentence. We’ll look at the decision and try to use any positive point which is there for the accused.”

Another Vanunu brother, Asher, said after Thursday’s verdict that “there are members of parliament from all the European states and in the United States that support him and think there is a chance that in the end he will be freed.”

Feldman commented: “I think at some stage the government will come open with the nuclear case. It cannot remain closed forever. I would say the Vanunu case has helped to speed that up.”