JNN 22 Dec 2010 : Vanunu made headlines in 1986, when he divulged shocking secrets about Tel Aviv’s nuclear activities. He was kidnapped later in Italy by Mossad’s special agents and sentenced to 18 years behind bars.

A host of elites and Nobel laureates, including Irish peace activist Mairead Maguire and German writer Gunter Grass, have called on Israel to allow Vanunu to attend the International League of Human Rights prize ceremony scheduled for December 12.
Vanunu has been named as this year’s recipient of the Carl von Ossietzky Medal.

The prize is named after the renowned German pacifist, who had opposed the Nazi regime, and who was later held in a concentration camp and murdered.

Ossietzky is also famous to have been denied the Nobel Peace Prize laureate as a result of Nazi Germany’s unwillingness to allow the peace activist to leave its border when he was named laureate in 1935.

Vanunu made headlines in 1986, when he divulged shocking secrets about Tel Aviv’s nuclear activities in an interview with a British newspaper, The Sunday Times.

The disclosure cracked the secrecy around the assumed Israeli nuclear arsenal.

The Moroccan-born scientist was kidnapped later in Italy by Mossad’s special agents and sentenced to 18 years behind bars.

He reportedly spent 11 years of his prison term in solitary confinement.

Vanunu was released from prison in 2004, but has not been allowed to leave Israel.

During recent years the former technician at Israel’s main atomic reactor, Dimona, has constantly protested against the Tel Aviv-imposed restrictions and his lack of freedom and has appealed to international bodies for help.

In 2007, the controversial figure was once again sentenced to six months in jail for violating the terms of his parole.

Vanunu who has converted to Christianity has become a hero for many peace activists, and was nominated several times for a Nobel Prize.

In March 2009, he responded by writing the following to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee:

“I am asking the committee to remove my name from the list for this year’s list of nominations,” he said, arguing that “I cannot be part of a list of laureates that includes (Israeli President) Shimon Peres. He is the man who was behind all the Israeli atomic policy.”