Scottish clergy support Mordechai Vanunu

 


“We join with Amnesty International, the Scottish First Minister and many others in the Scottish Parliament and around the world in demanding the release of Mordechai Vanunu as a prisoner of conscience.

Mordechai Vanunu, the elected Rector of Glasgow University’s students, remains subject to a ban on travelling within Israel/Palestine and further afield. An Israeli court has now sentenced Mordechai Vanunu to six months in prison for ‘speaking to foreigners’. Such an ominous charge would implicate many Scots, including journalists, in Vanunu’s further imprisonment.

We urge the Israeli Government to release the man whom it kidnapped from a European capital and imprisoned for eighteen years, almost twelve suffered in solitary confinement. His ‘crime’ was to confirm, in a series of interviews to the London Times, the existence of Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Vanunu has acted throughout in support of international law and in opposition to aggressive wars and weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East and elsewhere.

We ask our elected representatives to sign motion S3M-418 for the liberty of Mordechai Vanunu currently before the Scottish Parliament. We ask Glasgow University authorities to make the strongest public representations to the Israeli authorities to secure Vanunu’s liberty to allow him to come to Scotland.”

November 2007

Signatories:

  1. Reverend Stuart D MacQuarrie - University of Glasgow Chaplain
  2. Fr John Keenan - Roman Catholic Students Chaplain, University of Glasgow
  3. Rev Kathy Galloway - Leader of Iona Community
  4. Very Rev Dr Alan D McDonald - Minister St Leonards Parish Church, St Andrews, Church of Scotland Moderator of General Assembly 2006-2007
  5. Rev Marion Chatterley - Scottish Episcopal Church, Chaplain of Waverley Care
  6. Rev Dr Norman Shanks - Convener of the Church of Scotland General Assembly's Committee on Church and Nation 1988-1992, Leader of the Iona Community 1995-2002, Moderator of the Presbytery of Glasgow 2002-2003
  7. Rev John Ll Humphreys - Moderator, Synod of Scotland, The United Reformed Church
  8. Bishop Most Rev Dr Idris Jones - Bishop of Glasgow & Galloway and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church
  9. Dr Alison Elliot - Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland 2004-5
  10. Nancy Adams Convener - Convener, Church in Society Committee, Scottish Episcopal Church
  11. Rev Peter Macdonald - Minister St George's West Church, Church of Scotland
  12. Nelu Balaj - Scottish Churches Racial Justice Officer, Action of Churches Together in Scotland