Www bbc news world4/7/2023 ![]() His information, which was verified by experts in the nuclear field, also indicated that Dimona was capable of producing much more weapons-grade plutonium than previously thought.Īccording to him, the plant had been upgraded several times to increase production of plutonium and in 1985 could make 1.2 kg per week, enough for up to 12 nuclear warheads a year. ![]() Vanunu's pictures showed nuclear weapons making equipment in close detail In 1971 he became a sapper in the Israeli army, having failed in his main ambition to join the air force.Īfter military service he was taken on as a trainee at Dimona and ended up working in the underground Machon 2 facility, which he claimed was responsible for the production of the bomb components plutonium, lithium dueteride and beryllium. Mordechai Vanunu is a Moroccan Jew born in 1954, whose family arrived in Israel in 1963. It was against this murky backdrop that the Vanunu affair exploded in 1986. Israel never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, so Dimona is not subject to international scrutiny - and its "ambiguity" policy has been accepted by Washington (which has laws preventing it from supporting proliferating states) at face value. The 1986 Sunday Times story that lifted the lid off Israel's nuclear weapons programmeĮver since admitting that the Dimona plant housed a nuclear reactor rather than a textile factory, Israeli officials have insisted it is intended for exclusively peaceful purposes. Israel is thought to have begun its quest for weapons of mass destruction soon after the establishment of the state in 1948.įaced by a hostile region and vastly outnumbered by its enemies, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion desired a nuclear deterrent, but without wanting to upset Israel's friends by introducing non-conventional weapons into a flashpoint region. It was a decision that led him first to London and the Sunday Times - then to Rome and kidnapping by Israeli intelligence service Mossad - then back to Israel and a long jail sentence. One of the group, Colombian-born freelance journalist Oscar Guerrero, persuaded him to follow his conscience and publish the pictures along with detailed information about the Dimona plant. ![]() It is not clear whether Vanunu was already set upon blowing the whistle on Israel's secret nuclear activities, but by the following year he had joined a group of anti-nuclear Christians in Sydney, Australia, coincidentally being baptised as an Anglican. He had worked for nine years as a technician at the Dimona nuclear research centre in the Negev desert - but he left in late 1985 to backpack around the Far East, having become disillusioned with his work.īefore quitting he surreptitiously snapped two rolls of film at the top secret nuclear plant, including equipment for extracting radioactive material for arms production and laboratory models of thermonuclear devices. "That continued unabated until the media intervened and tried to approach her one day and she was never seen again after that."Ī memorial to all the victims stands in St James' churchyard.Įach anniversary of the crash, villagers lay floral tributes there.Vanunu gets a message to the outside world: "Vanunu M, was hijacked in Rome." "Up until the late 1950s, early 1960s, a mysterious woman dressed in black, big long flowing black robe used to visit the graveyard on the anniversary on 13 October each year and lay flowers on the grave," said Mr Thomas. But she has not been seen for several decades. Mr Thomas said for many years an unknown woman visited the graves where the bodies were buried locally. More bizarrely others believed they were the charred remains of a ventriloquist's dummies. There were suggestions at one time they were the bodies of two small men, possibly jockeys. Historian Ian Thomas, who has researched the crash, said the identities of the two small burnt bodies would probably always remain a puzzle.Ī number of theories developed locally over the years. Gas cylinders used to light carriages ignited on impact, and the ensuing fire hindered the identification of bodies. ![]() Rail archives show the train went through a red signal in thick fog. The train crashed under the road bridge at Charfield station in 1928Įighty years to the day after a train crash killed 15 people and injured a further 23, the bodies of two children remain unidentified.Ī Leeds-to-Bristol night mail train crashed under the road bridge at Charfield station, South Gloucestershire on 13 October, 1928. ![]()
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