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scarmani
(Hive Bee)
11-13-04 15:42
No 541381
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Vanunu Re-arrested
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Telling the truth is bad for your mobility. Organized religion is retarded - especially when state-sponsored.
Vanunu re-arrested for passing classified documents
By Associated Press November 12, 2004
Heavily armed police commandos stormed a Jerusalem church compound and arrested nuclear whistle blower Mordechai Vanunu on Thursday, drawing harsh condemnation from the Anglican Church, which accused Israel of violating the holy site.
Police said Vanunu, who had been released seven months ago after completing an 18-year prison sentence for treason, was arrested on suspicion he revealed classified information.
He was taken before a magistrate who ordered him confined to the church hostel under house arrest for seven days.
"This is a disgrace to Israeli democracy," Vanunu shouted to journalists as he was led into court. "They want to punish me again, they cannot punish me twice. I suffered 18 years in prison, I have the right to be free."
Israeli analysts said the arrest of Vanunu _ who has repeatedly defied orders not to give interviews _ may be an Israeli attempt to suppress discussion of its nuclear program at a time of increasing international efforts to block Israel's archenemy Iran from going nuclear.
Vanunu, 49, was released from prison in April after 18 years, much of it in solitary confinement, for disclosing secrets he learned as a technician at the Israeli nuclear reactor in the southern town of Dimona in the 1980s.
On Thursday morning, about 20 police commandos wearing bullet-proof vests and wielding machine guns burst into the walled compound of St. George's Anglican church where Vanunu has taken sanctuary in a guesthouse since his release, arresting him as he ate breakfast in the guesthouse dining room.
Police ransacked Vanunu's room and removed his computer and papers. Police spokesman Gil Kleiman declined to discuss what information Vanunu is suspected of revealing or to whom.
"We were sitting ... having breakfast at nine o clock, then all these military stormed in, running everywhere with heavy arms ," said Ninni Rydsjo, a Swedish aid worker who was staying at the hostel attached to the church.
"In the 100 years of the cathedral's history, such an event has never taken place," said Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal in a letter to Anglican leaders.
"This type of entry into a sacred space must not be tolerated ... and we call for the respect of sacred places in the Land of the Holy One," he wrote in the letter that was also sent to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
The Archbishop of Wales, Barry Morgan, condemned Israel in a statement for this "deliberately provocative act today in sending armed police officers into St. George's Anglican Cathedral."
A spokesman for Sharon, Raanan Gissin, dismissed the church protest, saying police had the right to search wherever necessary.
"It was all done according to the law under the recommendation of the attorney general," Gissin said.
Vanunu has acknowledged violating his release arrangement which barred him from meeting foreigners or discussing his work at Dimona, but said he had no more classified information to reveal.
"I don't have any secrets," he said Thursday. "I cannot invent new secrets, remember these secrets are now 19 or 20 years old."
Vanunu was convicted in 1988 for divulging information and pictures of the Dimona reactor. The details, published in London's Sunday Times, led experts to conclude that Israel has the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, including hundreds of warheads.
Israel has followed a policy of nuclear ambiguity, neither confirming nor denying it has nuclear weapons.
Shlomo Aronson, a professor at the Hebrew University and expert on Israel's nuclear program said Thursday's raid may have been designed to gag Vanunu who's repeated interviews on Israel's nuclear program were making it difficult to focus international attention on Iran's program.
"At the moment there is progress in dealing with Iran. Vanunu is harming the war against the Iranian bomb by creating a linkage with Israel's program," Aronson said.
Britain, France and Germany held intensive talks in recent days, trying to persuade Iran to suspend activities that could help make nuclear weapons.
While Iran insists it only wants to generate nuclear power, the United States and Israel have has accused it of trying to build nuclear weapons.
Vanunu, a convert to Christianity, became a hero to peace activists for his role in unveiling Israel's nuclear program.
Peter Hounam, the Sunday Times journalist who published Vanunu's nuclear revelations, accused the Israeli authorities of using Thursday's death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to try to divert attention from the arrest of Vanunu.
In an AP interview in September, Vanunu said he wanted to replace his Israeli citizenship with a foreign one, perhaps Palestinian.
"In Israel, I am regarded as a traitor ... and since my release they are not respecting my human rights, my freedom of speech, my freedom of movement," he said at the time.
http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Security/4378.htm
boot from the shadow of a broken mirror
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Unobtainium
(Minister of Propaganda)
11-14-04 01:57
No 541465
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Israel has no respect for anyone's religion...
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Israel has no respect for anyone's religion unless they are Jewish. I hope more actions like this follow. Once Israel pisses off the Christians, they can kiss their US and UK allies goodbye, and the Arabs can go in there and kick their asses which they so rightfully deserve.
Milk rots your brain.
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MargaretThatcher
(Hive Bee)
11-14-04 02:02
No 541467
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Divide and Conquer
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Israel is there for a purpose, and it ain't zionism.
Are you now, or have you ever been a Liberal? YES / NO
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Little_fat_boy
(Newbee)
11-14-04 08:38
No 541492
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?
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why would they re-arrest someone fter they interogated them
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