Government urged to offer Vanunu asylum

The Labour Party has called on the Government to indicate if it would be sympathetic to an application for asylum from former Israeli nuclear technician Mr Mordechai Vanunu.

Mr Vanunu recently completed an 18-year-jail prison term for revealing details of Israel's secret nuclear weapons programme.

Mordechai Vanunu who recently completed an 18-year-jail term for revealing details of Israel's secret nuclear weapons programme.

During his captivity he became an icon of the global anti-nuclear movement but is still regarded by some Israeli critics as a traitor.

Since his release from prison the Israeli authorities have imposed a number of restrictions on his movement, barring him from leaving the country, approaching air or sea ports, meeting foreign nationals or moving house.

Mr Vanunu, who believes his life is under threat from extremists, has expressed a desire to seek asylum abroad. Ireland was one of the countries he specified.

Labour's spokesman on foreign affairs, Mr Michael D.Higgins, says "the treatment of Mr Vanunu by the Israeli authorities has been shameful".

Mr Higgins said: "I believe that it would now be an appropriate humanitarian gesture for this country to indicate that it would be willing to consider offering Mr Vanunu asylum and he certainly appears to meet all the criteria for the granting of asylum.

Mr Vanunu was kidnapped by Israeli agents in Rome in 1986 and was forced to serve much of his sentence in solitary confinement.

Mr Higgins said offering Mr Vanunu asylum would "to some extent make up for the fact that Ireland and other European countries looked the other way when he was being kidnapped and treated so shamefully by the Israeli authorities".