JERUSALEM (AFP) - Mordechai Vanunu, who was freed in April after 18 years in an Israeli prison for revealing the country`s nuclear ambitions, was re-arrested at an east Jerusalem hotel.
Vanunu is suspected of having communicated "secret information to foreigners" and of having violated the restrictions imposed on him by Israeli security services after his release from prison, police said Thursday.
The former Israeli nuclear technician, 50, was taken into custody at an east Jerusalem hotel, where police seized documents found in his room, they said.
Since his release from prison on April 21, Vanunu has been subject to a series of sweeping restrictions, including a ban on travelling abroad as well as holding unauthorized meetings with foreigners.
He was also banned from leaving Israel for at least a year.
Vanunu was abducted by Israeli secret service agents in Italy, smuggled back to Israel and then jailed in 1986 after leaking top-secret details about the Dimona nuclear plant in the southern Negev desert to Britain`s Sunday Times.
In July, Israel`s supreme court rejected an appeal filed by Vanunu, who sought the lifting of the restrictions, saying they were unfairly severe and prevented him from leading a normal life.
But the judges rejected his appeal, ruling that he remained "a real threat" to national security after they had submissions from the security services.
Although banned from speaking to foreign journalists without prior authorization from the Israeli authorities, Vanunu has given interviews since his release in which he has denounced Israel`s nuclear program.
In April, he was quoted in the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper as saying that the 40-year-old Dimona plant could constitute a "second Chernobyl" following a possible accident.
But he insists that he has no more secrets to reveal.
Vanunu has said that he wants to leave Israel, where he is widely reviled as a traitor after not only lifting the lid on the country`s nuclear ambitions but also converting to Christianity.
"I don`t like Israel. I don`t want to live in Israel. I want to be free and to leave Israel," he said in July.
Israel has never admitted to having nuclear weapons, but is believed to possess an arsenal of about 200 warheads.
11/11/2004 - 14:37 GMT - AFP