Mordechai Vanunu, who was freed in April after 18 years in an Israeli prison for revealing the country's nuclear ambitions, has been placed under house arrest after being detained on suspicion of giving secret information to foreigners, a judicial source said yesterday.
The former Israeli nuclear technician, 50, was taken into custody at an east Jerusalem hotel on Thursday, where police seized documents found in his room, police said.
The judicial source said he was released from custody in the evening and placed under house arrest for seven days at his east Jerusalem home.
He has been banned from talking to the media and from announcing the exact nature of the charges against him.
Vanunu is suspected of having communicated "secret information to foreigners" and of having violated the restrictions imposed on him by Israeli security services after his release from prison, police said on Thursday.
Since his release from prison on April 21, Vanunu has been subject to a series of sweeping restrictions, including a ban on travelling abroad as well as holding unauthorized meetings with foreigners.
He was also banned from leaving Israel for at least a year.
Vanunu was abducted by Israeli secret service agents in Italy, smuggled back to Israel and then jailed in 1986 after leaking top-secret details about the Dimona nuclear plant in the southern Negev desert to Britain's Sunday Times.
In July, Israel's Supreme Court rejected an appeal filed by Vanunu, who sought the lifting of the restrictions, saying they were unfairly severe and prevented him from leading a normal life.
The judges ruled that he remained "a real threat" to national security after they had submissions from the security services.
But Vanunu insists that he has no more secrets to reveal.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS