Israeli nuclear spy, Mordechai Vanunu made a rare court appearance Monday to request that secret documents from his trial be made public and to seek permission to meet with his British attorneys.
According to AP, Vanunu arrived in court handcuffed and wearing brown prison garb. Vanunu, who is serving an 18-year prison term for treason, has spent several years in solitary confinement. He was recently granted permission to spend outdoor recesses with other inmates.
Vanunu, a former nuclear technician, was sentenced in 1988, two years after he gave The Sunday Times of London pictures of the nuclear reactor near the southern town of Dimona.
Avigdor Feldman, Vanunu's Israeli attorney, said that the Supreme Court hearing dealt mostly with a lower court ruling that Vanunu cannot access the protocols of his trial. No decision was made at the closed-door hearing.
"The decision is absurd. The trial is about him, he was the defendant in the trial. Just as he was present at the trial he should be allowed to read the protocols," Feldman told Army Radio at the end of the three-hour closed-door session.
Based on Vanunu's pictures, experts concluded that Israel had the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. The CIA estimated more recently that Israel has between 200 and 400 nuclear weapons. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
