JERUSALEM - Israeli police arrested nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu on Thursday on suspicion of spilling more state secrets seven months after he completed an 18-year prison term for treason.

Vanunu was bundled into an unmarked car at the Jerusalem church where he has lived since he left jail in April, witnesses said. Barred from going abroad or meeting foreign media for a probationary period, he had been under constant surveillance.

"He (Vanunu) is suspected of passing classified information to unauthorized parties," police spokesman Gil Kleiman said. "He is also suspected of violating the terms of his release."

Vanunu was expected to deny the allegations when brought to court later on Thursday or early Friday.

"He maintains he is innocent," Vanunu's lawyer Avigdor Feldman told Reuters.

The re-arrest of a man widely reviled in Israel but admired by anti-nuclear activists worldwide and repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize was overshadowed by the death of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in Paris.

A convert to Christianity, Vanunu, 50, was abducted in Rome by Mossad agents and jailed in 1986 for discussing his work at Israel's main atomic reactor in Dimona with a British newspaper. His revelations to the Sunday Times led experts to conclude that the Jewish state had amassed between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons, all but blowing away the country's policy of "strategic ambiguity" over its assumed non-conventional arsenal.

In July, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Vanunu to be allowed to leave Israel before the year-long ban expires, citing Defense Ministry charges that he intended to reveal more secrets.

Though he vowed to continue campaigning for nuclear disarmament, Vanunu denied having new information on Dimona.

He has since raised government hackles by criticizing Israeli policies in interviews.

Vanunu made a failed bid to win political asylum in Sweden last month, saying he felt his life was threatened. Supporters fear for Vanunu's safety in Israel, where most people despise him as a traitor and see the country's military might as an insurance policy against numerically superior Middle East foes.

In an interview conducted by an Israeli intermediary and broadcast by the BBC in early June, Vanunu said he exposed Dimona because he wanted to save Israel from a "new holocaust."

But he also questioned the Jewish state's right to exist.

© 2004 Reuters

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