MIDDLE EAST:Mordechai Vanunu, the man who revealed Israel's nuclear secrets to the world, was yesterday jailed again by a Jerusalem court for talking to foreigners in breach of his parole conditions.
The sentence follows a conviction in April for breaching his conditions 14 times by making contact with foreigners and travelling to Bethlehem at Christmas.
Vanunu, a former technician at Israel's Dimona nuclear plant, was first jailed in 1986 after he disclosed information about Israel's nuclear programme to the Sunday Times.
He was kidnapped in Italy and flown to Israel by agents of Mossad, Israel's equivalent of MI6, after being persuaded to travel from London to Rome in a "honey trap". He was jailed for 18 years and released in 2004 but banned from leaving the country.
In his ruling yesterday, Judge Yoel Tzur wrote that it was "not easy" to sentence Vanunu to more prison time, "especially since the accused served a long prison sentence in the past, most of it in solitary confinement". But, Judge Tzur wrote, it appeared "that the accused displayed total disdain" for the restrictions imposed on him.
Vanunu's defence team said before the conviction that the terms of their client's parole order were unreasonable and depended on the theory that he still retained top-secret information from his work at Dimona more than 20 years ago.
Vanunu's lawyer, Michael Sfard, said that the prosecution had not suggested anything Vanunu had said had damaged the security of the state.Avigdor Feldman, another of Vanunu's lawyers, said that the limitations on Vanunu "had no equal in any other democratic country" and called the sentence "unreasonable". Vanunu was given a six-month term and a six-month suspended sentence. - (Guardian Service)