40 years later: The Abduction of Mordechai Vanunu

Few whistleblowers have risked as much as Mordechai Vanunu did when he handed over covertly taken photographs of the Dimona nuclear facility in Israel to The Sunday Times in 1986. 40 years ago, on 30 September 1986, he was drugged and abducted by Mossad, taken back to Israel and sentenced to 18 years in prison, 11 of them in solitary confinement. Vanunu was released in 2004 but has not been allowed to leave the country or speak to a foreign person. For 40 years he has been punished for telling the world that Israel has nuclear weapons.

Mordechai Vanunu aka John Crossman is a former Israeli nuclear technician, born on 14 October 1952 in Marrakesh. Vanunu was the son of a Jewish-Moroccan grocer, who moved with his family to Israel in 1963. After serving with the Israeli army during the Yom Kippur war, he began studying physics in Tel Aviv but did not complete his studies.

In 1976 he began working at the highly secret Negev Nuclear Research Center in the Negev Desert, south of Dimona. He began to study economics at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba in 1979, and in the early 1980s he travelled through Europe and North America, the latter of which was not allowed by the Nuclear Research Center as his employer.

At around this time Vanunu began to become critical of government policy, opposing the 1982 Lebanon war and campaigning for equal rights for Arab-Israelis. During 1984 he was questioned three times by the security office at Dimona, once after a trip to France. In early 1985 he was laid off from the Nuclear Research Center but got his job back with the help of the trade union.

After resuming work at Dimona, Vanunu covertly took photographs of the site before quitting his job on 27 October 1985. In September 1986, Vanunu handed over these photographs and shared his knowledge of the Israel nuclear programme with the British newspaper The Sunday Times.

Vanunu’s information led to the conclusion that Israel, among other things, was producing tritium, enriching uranium and processing plutonium, enough for up to 150 nuclear weapons. Although the information was not new to informed circles in the UK and US, it was the first time that the extent of the Dimona secret nuclear weapons programme became known to the public. There was deep concern about the fact that Israel, not a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, was in possession of nuclear weapons.

Two leading nuclear experts — Frank Barnaby and Theodore Taylor — needed weeks to verify the information. But before the information could be published, Mordechai Vanunu was drugged and abducted by Mossad agents while he was in Rome. He had been lured there by a Mossad ‘honeytrap’ operation, using a woman calling herself ‘Cindy’ who was posing as a tourist from the USA. From there he was taken to Israel. While he was held on a cargo ship travelling to Israel, The Sunday Times published the information he had given them, on 5 October 1986. Two days later, Vanunu was in Gedera prison being interrogated. A month later, after first denying it to the British authorities, Israel confirmed they had him in detention.

Vanunu managed to inform the media of his abduction before Israel finally admitted they had taken him. He had written the following message on his hand: ”Vanunu M was hijacked in Rome ITL 30.9.86 21:00 came to Rome by BA fly 504”. He held his hand against the window of a van while being transported to court for the waiting press to see.

He was convicted and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment for treason, espionage and collecting information to impair state security, after a trial that was held in secret. The trial began on 30 August 1987 and he was sentenced on 28 March 1988. He was held for 18 years at Shikma Prison in Ashkelon, 11 years of which he was kept in solitary confinement. Vanunu later said that Israel wanted to drive him insane by keeping him in isolation so long. Both his family and lawyers were of the opinion that the lack of normal human contact had damaged his well-being. An Israeli MP said that the order to keep him in solitary confinement did not come from a court but from the security services.

Vanunu was released on 21 April 2004 but was prohibited from leaving Israel, and of speaking to foreigners without permission. He was not allowed to come within 500 metres of an airport or border crossing, or 90 metres from a foreign embassy. His phone and internet continue to be monitored.

He returned to prison for three months in 2010 after he was convicted in 2007 of having contact with foreigners and violating the terms of his release.

An application for asylum to Norway was turned down, as were applications to Sweden and Ireland, because applications cannot be considered from outside of the asylum country. Repeated calls by supportive organisations for him to be allowed to leave Israel have been rejected by Israel, including by the Supreme Court. On 19 May 2015 Vanunu married Norwegian professor Kristin Joachimsen in Jerusalem and in August 2015 applied for family reunification to Norway via the embassy in Tel Aviv. The Israel High Court denied his application to have the restrictions on his movements lifted. He appealed to the Supreme Court. On 3 December 2019, the appeal was denied. The court cited as justification “a concern about the probability of closeness to the certainty that if the restrictions imposed on Vanunu are removed, he will act to publish this information”. The information that Vanunu had was, by then, more than 30 years out of date.

On the first day of every month, Vanunu posted on Twitter:

“One more year without freedom since 1986. Now I am waiting for my freedom, freedom to leave Israel. I will continue to wait until my freedom comes. Born to be free. See you in freedom.”

In July 2024 he posted that all restrictions had been renewed for another year and he would only write his next post when free. The account no longer exists.

Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower, called Vanunu “the preeminent hero of the nuclear era”. Now himself a world-famous whistleblower, Mordechai Vanunu has won several awards, including the Right Livelihood Award in 1987 and the Nuclear Free Future Award in 2002 in the category of “Resistance”. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 but removed from the nominations list on his own request, as Shimon Peres was also listed that year.

Sources and further reading

Baltimore Chronicle: The 2002 Nuclear Free Future Awards, 4 Sep 2002, via Internet Archive, accessed 16 Sep 2026

Campbell D: The Guardian profile: Mordechai Vanunu, The Guardian, 16 Apr 2004

Cohen Y: The whistleblower of Dimona: Israel, Vanunu, and the Bomb, Holmes & Meier, 2003, accessed via Internet Archive on 16 Sep 2026

Daniszewski J: Convicted Israeli Spy Finally Out of Isolation, Los Angeles Times, 13 Mar 1998

Hounam P: Revealed: The Secrets of Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal, Peter Hounam Investigates, 5 Oct 1986

I24/Reuters: Israeli nuclear whistleblower marries Norwegian woman, but can’t leave country, via Internet Archive, 23 May 2015

Lotan Y: Vanunu: my story, The Times, 30 May 2004

Reuters: Norway rejects Vanunu’s asylum request, Ynet news, 15 Apr 2005

Xu T: The man who told the truth the world already knew — still waiting for freedom, The Online Citizen, 14 May 2026