Jerusalem -- Israel's Supreme Court has rejected a petition by nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu to receive copies of letters and a prison journal he kept during his 18 years in jail. The warden of the prison where Vanunu served his sentence for treason confiscated the documents before his release a year ago. On 25 July, Israel's highest court upheld the confiscation, saying the journal and copies of more than 2500 letters Vanunu sent to supporters, contained sensitive information.
Vanunu, a convert to Christianity, now lives under restrictions in east Jerusalem at St George's Anglican cathedral.
He kept uncensored copies of the letters he wrote as the originals were vetted by the authorities, and sections referring to Israel's atomic programme and his 1986 kidnapping by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency in Rome were blacked out.
The court also rejected his lawyer's suggestion that censors cut out sensitive material from the documents before giving Vanunu copies. It said the material was so vast it was not feasible to have each document and letter inspected by censors as it would be a "huge task - time, money and manpower-wise".
The court did not rule on an appeal by Vanunu, a former nuclear technician at Israel's secret Dimona atomic reactor, against other security measures that compel him to remain in Israel against his will and that have forbidden him from speaking to the foreign media since his release from jail.
His lawyer, human rights advocate Dan Yakir, said: "It is absurd that he was allowed to send the letters out to people around the globe, but he is not allowed to have their copies. If the Defense Ministry was negligent and did not keep copies of the censored letters it is their problem, not Mordechai Vanunu's."
The information Vanunu leaked to a British newspaper led foreign analysts to conclude that Israel had as many as 200 nuclear warheads.
