Vanunu to be allowed live in Norway

by Justin Morahan Tue Apr 15, 2008 01:24

PRESS RELEASE:

ISRAELI WHISTLEBLOWER WELCOME TO NORWAY

The Labour Minister of Immigration in Norway, Bjarne Hakon Hanssen, said last Friday that Mordechai Vanunu is welcome to Norway: " If he gets a job offer here, he will of course get a permit to stay and work in Norway". Vanunu is the nuclear whistleblower who has been Israel´s hostage since his kidnap by Mossad agents from London in 1986.

Confronted with the fact that Vanunu is banned by government decree from leaving Israel, a member of the cabinet, Aslaug Haga, Center Party leader and former deputy Foreign Minister, admitted that a major diplomatic effort towards Israel will be needed. Then, on Sunday night, a meeting of the National Committee of the third member party of the coalition cabinet, the Socialist Left Party, decided to invite Vanunu to come to Norway in May this year.

- This welcome to Norway does not solve Vanunu´s problem, but is a major step forward, says Fredrik S. Heffermehl, a Norwegian, for the International Vanunu Committee. Up to now our efforts to protect Vanunu´s elementary human rights have received only cold shoulders. After 21 _ years the brutalit inhumanity against Vanunu has to stop. Since a secret deterrent is ineffective, Vanunu did Israel a service by documenting the nuclear weapons program. Israel´s illtreatment of him is totally meaningless, unfair and unacceptable from a state laying claim to be a democracy under the rule of law, Heffermehl says.

Vanunu has been exposed to severe inhumanity and human rights violations for 21 _ years, first the kidnap, then a secret trial, then 11 _ years in strict isolation, and then - at the end of his full sentence - he was not free, but subjected to additional punishment, bans on travel and talk, a grave violation of his basic freedoms under international treaties. Vanunu has done more for a nuclear free world than most of us, and has suffered more for his principled action against an illegal weapon, our

The political breakthrough for Vanunu, with the three-party coalition government, followed a brilliant piece of investigative journalism, where Vidar Ystad, one of Norway´s finest political journalists uncovered that since 2005 The Norwegian Immigration Authority has held the view that Vanunu fulfilled all requirements for political asylum in Norway and, further, that the former conservative government of Kjell Magne Bondevik had broken the law when its Minister of Immigration, Erna Solberg, leader of the Conservative Party, interfered to stop the Immigration Authority from granting asylum to Vanunu.

Fredrik S. Heffermehl, the International Vanunu Committee

For further information: [email protected],
phone: +47 2244 8003 (cell phone: +47 917 44 783).

www.vanunu.org, ("Updates") gives access to a legal briefs by US lawyers, my report on the decision against Vanunu in Israel´s Supreme Court etc.

by S2S Tue Apr 15, 2008 01:57

He will be able to benefit from the Corrib gas.

by paul o toole Tue Apr 15, 2008 09:40 pauljotoole at eircom dot net

This is great new for Vanunu, and for all those who struggle with the madness of the Nuclear problem.
Mutually Assured Destruction(MAD) is the only logical conclusion which can be bourne out when we have world leaders capable of little or no restraint when it comes to collective punishment of innocent people.
I believe Vanunu was offered release mid sentence if he promised to keep silent and his answer was (paraphrase)...'.my freedom of speech is not for sale...' ..and then returned to his solitary confinement.

With enough Nuclear weapons to '..innihilate all life on this plannet thirty times over..'...according to The California Institute For Nuclear Studies, is it little wonder that Vanunu's sane voice of reason must be quashed by those bent on destruction.
Kill the prophets, lock up the peacemakers and call the pacifists cowards and those who dont agree call them un-patriotic.
It is an indictment of Vanunu's powerful message that he has been subjected to such harrowing treatment. As someone I know says....you have the right to free speech until it becomes effective...

by AsylumSqueeker Tue Apr 15, 2008 11:03

I think I can guess!! Dermot Ahern probably sucked up to his lords and masters in the US and put in a word to make sure they find a problem with his application. Am I right? If he did manage to get in, he would be entering a "Political Asylum", that's for sure!