Campaign to Free Vanunu and for a Nuclear-Free Middle East

The Campaign to Free Vanunu (CFV) has its origins in the international response to the abduction and imprisonment of the Israeli nuclear technician Dr Mordechai Vanunu, who was convicted of treason, espionage and revealing state secrets in 1988.

The Campaign was a London-based organisation, which campaigned through political and media networks and which at its height during the mid nineties mobilised several high profile figures in the arts and sciences. Beginning as an ad hoc body, the CFV was apparently founded by Vanunu's brother Meir, and supported by a small group of activists. It wasn't until February 1991 that it was formalised under a legal framework. On 19 February a declaration of trust was made between The Right Livelihood Awards Foundation (RLAF) and Peter Benenson (founder of Amnesty International), Ken Coates (writer and MEP), Bruce Kent (former general secretary and chair of CND and president of the International Peace Bureau), Yael Lotan (writer and editor), Harold Pinter (writer), Andrew Wilski (a psychiatrist) and Carl Jakob Wolmar von Uexkull (a former member of the European Parliament for Germany and the RLAF's founder). Benenson and the others constituted themselves as the Mordechai Vanunu Trust (MVT).

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