Free Vanunu to Norway: International Intervention Required

By Eileen Fleming

On Wednesday Mordechai Vanunu wrote regarding this Norwegian media report translated by Google:

Norway opening the door very slightly for asylum or emergency passport for the Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu.

Minister Vidar Helgesen said ‘We would consider it.’

Helgesen said Norway had asked Israel to take humanitarian considerations in this matter, even though the minister also stressed that it was up to the Israeli judiciary to abolish restrictions.

262 legal experts have pointed out that it will be of great importance if Norway gave Vanunu asylum or emergency passports, regardless of what Israel might think.

It is the Israeli ruling that prevents Mordechai Vanunu exit…but if Vanunu or his wife asks for assistance, we will consider it, said Helgesen who stated that a possible application as would be processed by UDI ‘as usual.’

Centre Party foreign policy spokesman Navarsete stated, ‘I would urge the government to make a difference…it would attract international attention if Norway gave nuclear whistleblower asylum or emergency passport – despite the Israeli sanctions against him.’

 

International attention needs to also focus on the fact that in April The National Security Archive of George Washington University published documents detailing the discovery of Israel’s nuclear deceptions, debates over Israel’s lack of candor and efforts to pressure the Israelis to answer key questions about the Dimona.

 
Among the documents are the June 1959 Israel-Norway secret agreement providing for the sale of Norwegian heavy water to Israel [through the United Kingdom], transmitted by Oslo Embassy political officer Richard Kerry, the father of Secretary of State John Kerry.

Excerpted from Document 20: “The Possibility of [It] Embarrassing the Government” Letter from Richard Kerry, U.S. Embassy Oslo, to William Burdette, Office of British Commonwealth and Northern European Affairs, 30 December 1960:

In response to the State Department request, embassy officers in Oslo obtained more information on the Israel-Norway heavy water deal and the terms of the sale agreement, which included a ‘peaceful uses’ stipulation.

On 30 December, political officer Richard Kerry obtained a copy of the agreement which he believed could be embarrassing to the Norwegian government in light of its efforts to play the role of ‘honest broker’ in international conflicts, including the Middle East.

The agreement included an Israeli commitment that the use of the heavy water was for peaceful purposes, including an inspection clause.

According to Kerry’s letter, a major problem was that the heavy water sale had been initially treated as a commercial sale by the Norwegian firm NORATOM without appropriate vetting by political experts at the Foreign Ministry (like an earlier controversial sale of weapons to the Batista dictatorship in Cuba).

Kerry asked the State Department to keep the transaction a secret and so it stayed until the late 1970s when the Stockholm Institute of Peace Research disclosed it.

 

International intervention must also focus on Norway giving Vanunu an emergency passport on humanitarian grounds because on 18 June 2010, Malcolm Smart, Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East Programme issued the statement:

Mordechai Vanunu is a prisoner of conscience…

The restrictions on Mordechai Vanunu arbitrarily limit his rights to freedom of movement, expression and association and are therefore in breach of international law.

They should be lifted and he should be allowed to start his life again as a free man

 

On 2 July 2007, THE JERUSALEM POST wrote:

On Monday, Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court sentenced [Vanunu] to six months in jail for having committed 14 violations of the restrictions imposed upon him when he was released from prison in April 2004…

[DETAILS regarding Vanunu’s freedom of speech trial HERE]

Judge Yoel Tzur also referred to an appeal against the state which Vanunu had lodged in 1998, while still in prison.

In that appeal, a doctor testified in Beersheba District Court that Vanunu suffered from chronic paranoid schizophrenia.

Tzur said that although Vanunu’s lawyers, Avigdor Feldman and Michael Sfard, had not presented the doctor’s testimony in court, he would still take it into account because Vanunu’s condition was said to be chronic.

 In BEYOND NUCLEAR: Mordechai Vanunu’s FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker: 2005-2010 after I noted the above article I continued:

 

I am not a doctor, but I am married to one. My degree is in nursing and what I do know, is that any human subjected to the psychological and emotional torture and sense deprivation that Vanunu endured would suffer a break with reality within ten days if not ten hours.

Vanunu did not break from reality until his first appeal was denied after five years of solitary confinement.

From 1986 to 2004, Israel kept Vanunu in a tomb sized cell without windows.

A harsh light over his head burned 24/7 and a camera documented his every move.

When Vanunu did nod off to sleep, “A guard would come and shine a brighter light into my face and say, ‘Just checking if you had committed suicide yet.’”

Vanunu spent nearly twelve of his eighteen years in solitary confinement, and when released from solitary, he was forbidden to mix with Palestinians.

Vanunu would not mix with the Israeli prisoner population for fear of his life and he ate alone for 18 years…

 

The USA is most complicit in Israel’s nuclear deceptions and also may have taken instruction from Israel regarding State Torture by solitary confinement.

In 2002, President Bush declared U.S. citizen, Jose Padilla an enemy combatant and he was stripped of all rights and detained at a Navy brig in South Carolina where he was held in solitary isolation for 43 months and denied access to an attorney for two years.

Forensic Psychiatrist Angela Hegarty examined Padilla and concluded the extreme isolation and torture had left Padilla essentially brain damaged, “What happened at the brig was essentially the destruction of a human being’s mind.”

Israel’s State Torture of Vanunu began with his kidnapping in 1986 and continues to this day!

Vanunu has a complex and challenging personality, but it is not paranoia when Israel monitors his every snail mail, email, telephone conversation, his meetings and movements.

If Vanunu is a chronic paranoid schizophrenic, I contend all that blood is on Israel’s hands.

On 23 September 2008, the Jerusalem District Court even reduced Vanunu’s freedom of speech jail sentence from six to three months, “In light of (Vanunu’s) ailing health and the absence of claims that his actions put the country’s security in jeopardy.”

 

 

 I saw Vanunu for the last time in Nov. 2013 and when he asked me “what I thought of this Vanunu?”

I readily replied that I liked this Vanunu the best yet because during my previous visits he had always vented his anger.

I remarked to Vanunu about that and then I told him I felt we had really become friends.

Vanunu smiled slightly, shrugged lightly and nodded his head affirmatively as if to say why not?

I also asked him if I could publish about our meeting and Vanunu replied, “Do what you want” which is exactly what he had always said when ever he wanted to end an argument with me.

That visit with Vanunu can be read HERE

 

 

Since then I have kept Vanunu and Big Brother posted on my actions and prolific writings by emailing Vanunu usually with SUBJECT: SECURITY Alert

The content of the email may have been a Vanunu Google Alert to an article, or an update on the then over 21,000 members of TNT/Telling Nuclear Truths and THIS PETITION I created.

 

Or my email may have been regarding the Facebook Wall Free Vanunu which I also created with the expectation that Vanunu would one day assume responsibility for it and TNT.

I also often reminded SECURITY via my emails to Vanunu that I would persist to tell/write his story UNTIL there was a FREE Vanunu.

 

Vanunu never replied nor emailed me until Sun, Mar 22, 2015 when he included me on an email with nine others:

Dear Friends,

Just to let you know the latest news in my case.

The small change they give me in these restrictions few months ago, (30 minutes to speak to some one in the streets), it did not make any real change.

And my main target is to leave Israel, not meeting any one here. The time of meeting foreigners is over.

So I am ready to leave, whenever they will end these restrictions.

But before I am going to leave I discover by chance, they had prepared another block for my leaving, I found that I owe 100.000 Shekels to the Israel main news paper Yediot Aharonot, because I lost a Libel suit against them in 2005…not only they are allowed to publish lies about me, (that I am sending from prison instructions to the Palestinians how to make bombs,) but I also should pay them, because the lies come from the head of Shaback they can publish them….

 

I publicly replied on March 23 after doing the research regarding Mordechai Vanunu: Cases of Libel and Extortion Security and Press

 

On April 2^nd I was ecstatic when Vanunu finally took over responsibility for TNT and the Facebook Wall and I expressed that at Resurrection of Mordechai Vanunu Ends the Legend of Vanunu

 

I was dismayed when Vanunu renamed TNT after himself, deleted my five years of work and then I received a left to the liver with Vanunu UPDATE #14 published on Apr 8:

 

Vanunu is now in charge of this page eileen is no more in my case.

To all my Supporters,Just to let you know ,Vanunu is now in charge of this page, Eileen Fleming is not and have nothing to do with my case any more ,she is not my supporter any more,she can not speak or report on my behalf any more,you can ignore all her spams.Thank you.Vanunu.

 

WHY I cancelled my support for Vanunu’s Indiegogo campaign is also what I posted in reply and which Vanunu deleted:

 

You win! As you wrote: ‘Eileen Fleming is not my supporter.’

 Thus I have cancelled my support of this campaign and have sent request to Indiegogo for a refund of $1,100.00.

I will also no longer forward any funds to Mr Vanunu for Beyond Nuclear: Mordehcai Vanunu’s Freedom of Speech trial and My Life as Muckraker 2005-2010

 

I had already mailed four German supporters of Vanunu’s Indiegogo campaign one of the first and only press collector editions of  BEYOND NUCLEAR: Mordechai Vanunu’s FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker: 2005-2010 which Vanunu had briefly offered as a ‘perk’ at his Indiegogo campaign.

I also commented and Vanunu also censored:

Eileen Fleming never “represented” Vanunu and I have always followed my conscience and written my heart. And as everything the World needs to know about Vanunu he has already said and as “everything is already on the Internet” here are a few of my video interviews with Vanunu who clearly represents himself- I only gave him the opportunity to do so from USA MEDIA.

 

LEARN MORE:

Netanyahu thanks U.S. for blocking a Nuclear Weapons Free Middle East

The Vanunu Legend