May 1989, he appealed his conviction and sentence to the Israeli Supreme Court and was brought from prison in a closed police vehicle to the Supreme Court for an appeal hearing. In 1990, his appeal was rejected. The following year, an appeal to the Supreme Court arguing for better prison conditions was also rejected. On 12 March 1998, after having spent over eleven years in solitary confinement, Vanunu was released into the general prison population. While in prison, Vanunu took part in small acts of defiance, such as refusing psychiatric treatment, refusing to initiate conversations with the guards, reading only English-language newspapers rather than Hebrew ones, refusing to work, refusing to eat lunch when it was served, and watching only BBC television. "He is the most stubborn, principled and tough person I have ever met", said his lawyer, Avigdor Feldman. In 1998, Vanunu appealed to the Supreme Court for his Israeli citizenship to be revoked. The Interior Minister denied Vanunu's request on grounds that he did not have another citizenship. He was denied parole because he refused to promise that he would never speak of the Dimona facility or his kidnapping and imprisonment. Many critics argue that Vanunu had no additional information that would pose a real security threat to Israel and that its government's only motivation is to avoid political embarrassment and financial complications for itself and allies such as the United States. By not acknowledging possession of nuclear weapons, Israel avoids a US legal prohibition on funding countries that proliferate weapons of mass destruction. Such an admission would prevent Israel from receiving over $2 billion each year in military and other aid from Washington. Ray Kidder, then a senior American nuclear scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has said: Release, liberties restrictions and asylum applications Vanunu was released from prison on 21 April 2004. Surrounded by dozens of journalists and flanked by two of his brothers, he held an impromptu press conference but refused to answer questions in Hebrew because of the suffering he said he sustained at the hands of the State of Israel. Vanunu said Israel's Mossad spy agency and the Shin Bet security services tried to rob him of his sanity by keeping him in solitary confinement. "You didn't succeed to break me, you didn't succeed to make me crazy," he said. Vanunu also called for Israel's nuclear disarmament, and for its dismantlement as a