Scooter Libby has already paid his $250,000 fine [no financial hardship evident there!] and escaped jail. Over on the other side of the world, for no offence other than speaking with the press, Israeli Mordechai Vanunu has, again, been sentenced to a term of imprisonment.
The case of Vanunu is well known around the world. To imprison him again is outrageous. In drawing parallels between the cases and situations of Libby and Vanunu, Daniel Ellsberg [yes, that Daniel Ellsberg of the Watergate Papers fame] concludes that there is something perverse in all of this - as he writes in CommonDreams:
"On the day that Scooter Libby’s prison sentence was lifted by President Bush, Mordechai Vanunu was sentenced to prison, again, in Israel. In both cases, the underlying offense was the same: speaking to journalists. In each case, the nominal charges were otherwise. For Libby, lying under oath about the circumstances, thereby obstructing justice. For Vanunu, it was breaking a restriction laid upon him when he emerged from prison three years ago, after serving an earlier full sentence of eighteen years, also for speaking to journalists: he was ordered not to speak, at all, to journalists or foreigners. Like a free man, he did both, openly and repeatedly.
But whereas Libby had passed classified information, and Vanunu had served his earlier sentence for doing the same, in this instance Vanunu was not charged with revealing any secrets. The transcripts or published accounts of his conversations being available, it was open knowledge that what he had mainly talked about was the truth of his personal convictions about nuclear weapons: that they should universally be abolished, Israel’s among them."
The case of Vanunu is well known around the world. To imprison him again is outrageous. In drawing parallels between the cases and situations of Libby and Vanunu, Daniel Ellsberg [yes, that Daniel Ellsberg of the Watergate Papers fame] concludes that there is something perverse in all of this - as he writes in CommonDreams:
"On the day that Scooter Libby’s prison sentence was lifted by President Bush, Mordechai Vanunu was sentenced to prison, again, in Israel. In both cases, the underlying offense was the same: speaking to journalists. In each case, the nominal charges were otherwise. For Libby, lying under oath about the circumstances, thereby obstructing justice. For Vanunu, it was breaking a restriction laid upon him when he emerged from prison three years ago, after serving an earlier full sentence of eighteen years, also for speaking to journalists: he was ordered not to speak, at all, to journalists or foreigners. Like a free man, he did both, openly and repeatedly.
But whereas Libby had passed classified information, and Vanunu had served his earlier sentence for doing the same, in this instance Vanunu was not charged with revealing any secrets. The transcripts or published accounts of his conversations being available, it was open knowledge that what he had mainly talked about was the truth of his personal convictions about nuclear weapons: that they should universally be abolished, Israel’s among them."
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