Mordechai Vanunu, who is to be freed Wednesday after 18 years in prison for blowing the whistle on Israel's nuclear programme, remains unrepentant and does not regard himself as a traitor, according to new footage.
"I am neither a traitor nor a spy. I only wanted the world to know what was happening" at the Dimona nuclear plant in southern Israel, Vanunu said during an interrogation by security service agents which is to be broadcast on Israeli television Monday night.
Vanunu said that he had been motivated by a desire "to destroy the reactor", saying that he had acted "for the (good of the) world".
"Why did the world perceive me as a hero or appreciate what I did - except for Israel?" he asked.
"Just like they destroyed the Iraqi reactor, I want them to destroy the Israeli reactor," he said in reference to Iraq's Osirak nuclear plant which was the target of a 1981 Israeli air raid.
Vanunu, a former technician at Dimona, was sentenced in 1986 after leaking details of Israel's secret nuclear arsenal to Britain's Sunday Times newspaper.
Israeli agents lured Vanunu from London to Italy where he was kidnapped and brought to Israel. He was tried in secret and found guilty of espionage.
He will be subjected to a series of unprecedented restrictions after his release, including a ban on talking to foreigners or leaving the country.
He will not be expressly forbidden from contact with the Israeli media, but they are subject to strict censorship on the nuclear programme.
His lawyers said Monday that they have appealed to the Israeli government against the restrictions.
The senior attorney for the Association for Human Rights in Israel (ACRI), Oded Feller, "submitted its reservations yesterday regarding the severe restrictions that state agencies are seeking to impose on Vanunu after his release", ACRI said in a statement.
Feller said in the appeal to Interior Minister Avraham Poraz and the head of the Home Front Command, Major General Yaior Naveh, "that the prohibitions and restrictions ... are unreasonable, and constitute a severe and unjustified infringement of the freedom of the released prisoner."
Amnesty International also urged the Israeli government Monday not to impose any restrictions or conditions on Vanunu.
"His release is long overdue and Israel must not continue to violate his fundamental human rights once he is released from prison," it said in a statement.
Vanunu himself denied that he remained any threat to national security and said he had no more nuclear secrets to reveal.
"First of all, I've been on the inside for 20 years - everything has changed already," he told his interrogators.
"Second, what I went through is a process the entire world knows about ... it's clear that everything has been published. Science has progressed.
"Technology has taken giant steps forward, so what I saw appears to me to be very old. I don't think the Americans are interested, or the Europeans."