Nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu, still barred from leaving Israel more than a decade after completing an 18-year-jail term, said Friday he wants to join his new bride in Norway.
“I got married three months ago to my wife who is in Norway,” he told Channel 2 television station in an interview of which excerpts were released earlier this week.
“She is the wage-earner, she is the one who is working, she can’t live here,” Vanunu said. “I want to start living my life.”
Vanunu was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 1986, after being convicted of treason and espionage for revealing details of Israel’s nuclear plant in Dimona, where he had worked as a nuclear technician.
Since his release in 2004 – upon which he expressed to remorse for his actions – Vanunu has been subjected to a number of restrictions aimed at preventing him from leaking further classified information. Among other things he is forbidden from speaking to foreigners, from leaving the country or even approaching its borders.
He has been arrested several times for breaching those conditions, and even spent short stints in prison as a result.
He is also forbidden from speaking to journalists, but was granted permission to speak to Israel’s Channel 2.
In Friday’s interview he said that after years of working at Dimona and winning promotion he was not searched on entry and was able to smuggle in a camera and take 58 pictures of the facilities without being detected.
“I’ve finished with all that,” he told the channel. “I don’t have any secrets and I want to leave. They should let me leave and live my life with my wife abroad.”
Vanunu married Norwegian theology professor Kristin Joachimsen at a Lutheran church in Jerusalem on May 19.
The 60-year-old converted to Christianity shortly before being snatched in Rome by Mossad agents and smuggled to Israel.
AFP contributed to this report.
(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)
