SMEAR stories in the Israeli press about Mordechai Vanunu, the whistle-blower who exposed the country’s nuclear weapons programme, have heightened concerns that harsh restrictions may be imposed on his movements when he is released from jail on April 21.

Vanunu, convicted at a secret trial in 1986 of treason and spying after he leaked details of Israel’s secret underground plutonium plant in the Negev desert to The Sunday Times, will have spent 17½ years in jail.

Stories in the Israeli press over the past fortnight have suggested that ways are being sought to deny the former nuclear technician a passport, keeping him in administrative detention under rarely used emergency regulations or having him followed by a 24-hour phalanx of secret service guards.

The principal advocate of such measures is believed to be Yehiel Chorev, head of a defence ministry department that controls secret information. As if to back up Chorev’s argument that Vanunu is still a danger to Israeli security, some of the country’s newspapers in the past few days have gone out of their way to blacken his character and claim that he is out to seek vengeance.

Dan Margalit, a well-known television chat show host, wrote a column last week saying that Vanunu must be silenced and killing him might be justified if he talked. “Vanunu damaged the foundations of Jewish existence,” he said.

Yediot Aharonot, the largest national newspaper, ran a story quoting a man who, it claimed, had served a sentence with Vanunu. Yossi Harush accused him of attempting to burn an Israeli flag, smashing a glass of holy wine and celebrating whenever there was a suicide bombing.

Vanunu’s fate was raised in the Knesset when Issam Makhoul, a Palestinian member of parliament, warned that the government would attempt to kill him. Gideon Ezra, a cabinet minister, yelled: “Shut your mouth. There are some people here who want to finish the state of Israel.”

Yael Lotan, a leading member of the Vanunu defence committee in Israel, accused the government of being behind what she described as a hate campaign against him. “It is pure vindictiveness,” she said.

Vanunu’s lawyers have argued for some years that their client has no new information that could harm Israeli security.

Vanunu’s brother Meir, who arrived in Israel last week from Australia to help to prepare for his release, said: “He has paid a terrible price for what he did and just wants to get on with rebuilding his life again.”

• Susannah York, the actress, will be one of today’s speakers at a public meeting organised by the British Vanunu campaign at 5pm at the Liberal Synagogue, St John’s Wood Road, London NW8.

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