Mordechai Vanunu, the man who denounced Israel's secret nuclear program three decades ago and ended up being kidnapped by Mossad

Vanunu was a former employee of Dimona's nuclear reactor who spent 9 years working on those facilities, until 1985.

But before leaving his post, he made two photographs of the facilities clandestine.

In the photos, the equipment appeared to extract radioactive material for the production of weapons and the Laboratory of thermonuclear devices.

In 1986 he entered an antinuclear group in Sydney, Australia, and it was there that he contacted a journalist freelance Colombian, Óscar Guerrero. He convinced him to publish the photos.

Thus, he contacted the journalist Peter Hounam of the British newspaper The Sunday Times.

In October 1986, the Sunday Times He published an article, widely acclaimed as one of the best pieces of British journalism, under the title “revealed: the secrets of Israel's nuclear arsenal.”

The source was the Israeli nuclear coach Mordechai Vanunu, and its revelation confirmed the suspicions about the nuclear capabilities of their country, showing a larger and more advanced weapons program than anyone would have thought earlier.

Vanunu had worked at the Dimona Ultrasecreto Nuclear Research Center, in the Néguev desert, about 150 kilometers south of Jerusalem by road.

The newspaper concluded that Israel had become the sixth nuclear power of the world and owned up to 200 atomic weapons.

“We were tense, we were exhausted, most people had never worked in a story as important as this,” newspaper journalist, Peter Houm, told the BBC.

But the day when The Sunday Times He published the news – on October 5 – his key source disappeared.

Hounam met Vanunu for the first time in Sydney, Australia, in August 1986 and was surprised by the appearance and behavior of the complainant.

“When I saw Vanunu sitting there – a little man often, snorting slightly, without self -confidence, dressed in a very informal way – he certainly didn't seem like a nuclear scientist,” Hounam recalled.

“But he was convinced of his decision to tell the world what he saw in Dimona,” he added.

At the end of 1985, Vanunu decided to leave his job and undertake a trip through Asia, disappointed by the treatment Israel was giving to the Palestinians and for the development of nuclear weapons.

Before retiring, he took photos of the nuclear plant, including equipment to extract radioactive material for the production of weapons and thermonuclear device laboratory models.

It was a decision that first led to London and Sunday Timesand then to Rome, where he was kidnapped by the Israeli Intelligence Service Mossad, who took him back to Israel, where he served a long prison sentence.

“He began to outline the story of how he had smuggled a camera without a roll to the central, and then had smuggled the roll in his stockings and had begun to take some photos secretly soon and early in the morning,” said Hounam.

The editors of Sunday Times They asked Hounam to bring Vanunu back to London to continue corroborating his testimony

Despite his fears, Vanunu agreed to fly to the United Kingdom. He Sunday Times He housed it in a discreet rural hotel on the outskirts of London.

But he worried and was transferred to a London hotel where things took an unexpected turn.

“That weekend he met a woman as she walked down the street. He saw her a couple of times and went to the cinema with her. And I asked her: 'Are you sure that this woman is authentic?'” He recalled Houm.

During his stay in London, Hounam began to worry more and more about Vanunu's security and began to monitor him periodically. He remembered his last conversation.

“He said: 'I'm just going to go to the north of England. I will be fine.'

A month later, the Israeli government revealed that Vanunu had been arrested. He had been the victim of a classic seduction trap in Rome and had been transferred clandestinely, unconscious, back to Israel by boat.

While they transported him from a prison in Israel, Vanunu wrote some details of his kidnapping in the palm of his hand, which he held in front of the truck window so that journalists could obtain the information.

He said that in London, a Mossad agent born in the United States, Cheryl Bentov, who had passed through tourists, had become his friend.

She attracted him to Rome on September 30 to spend a few days together. Once there he was kidnapped and drugged.

Vanunu was tried in March 1987 for betrayal and espionage, and was then sentenced to 18 years in prison. More than half of those years passed them in isolation.

“I wanted to tell the world what was happening … this is not betrayal, it is to inform the world, in contrast to Israel's policies,” Vanunu said in an interview recorded in prison.

He was released on April 21, 2004 and since then he has denied permission to leave Israel.

He has been imprisoned several times for breaching the conditions of his probation.

Before being arrested in 2009, Vanunu shouted: “They have not achieved anything from me in 18 years; they will not get anything in three months! What shame, Israel!”

Even Vanunu's revelations knew little about Israel's nuclear capacity, even among his closest allies.

It is believed that Israel began its nuclear program shortly after the foundation of the State in 1948.

Extensive in number by his enemies, the Israeli prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, recognized the value of nuclear deterrence, but did not want to dislike Israel's allies by introducing unconventional weapons in an unstable region.

Thus, Israel reached a secret agreement with France to build the Dimona plant, which is believed to be in production to manufacture the ingredients of nuclear weapons in the 1960s. For years, Israel said it was a textile factory.

American inspectors visited the place several times in the 1960s, but, as reported, they did not know the existence of the underground plants, since the holes of the elevators and the tickets had been tapped with bricks and plaster.

It is estimated that Israel currently has about 90 nuclear eyes, according to the Center for Weapons Control and non -proliferation.

However, it maintains an official ambiguity policy around its nuclear capacity, and Israeli leaders have frequently repeated throughout the years that “Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East.”

Since 1970, 191 states have adhered to the treaty on the non -proliferation of nuclear weapons (TNP), an agreement whose objective is to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons and promote disarmament.

Five countries (USA, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China) are allowed to possess weapons because they built and tested a nuclear explosive device before the entry into force of the treaty on January 1, 1967.

Israel is not a signatory of the treaty.

Vanunu is considered a traitor in Israel, but its supporters celebrated their release in 2004, qualifying it as “Peace Hero.”

In his first interview after being released, he told the BBC that he did not regret anything.

“What I did was inform the world of what is happening in secret. I did not come to say: 'We must destroy Israel, we must destroy Dimona,' I said: 'Look what they have and judge.'”

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