JERUSALEM (AP-29-SEP-97) After 11 years in solitary confinement for divulging

Israel's nuclear secrets, Mordechai Vanunu has become paranoid and

believes he is close to death, his brother said Monday.

Meir Vanunu also told The Associated Press that his brother has lost eight

to 10 pounds since January. "Mordechai is very suspicious, very paranoid,"

he said. "He thinks all sorts of little things are directed against him,

are personal."

Mordechai Vanunu thinks the color of things he sees are messages to him

from the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, his brother said. "He feels

there is a psychological war directed against him by people he cannot

see."

A spokeswoman for Israel's prison system said Vanunu was in good physical

and mental health was being monitored regularly by a prison doctor.

Vanunu, 43, was kidnapped by the Israeli secret service in Rome in 1986

after giving The Sunday Times of London photographs of the inside of the

Israeli nuclear reactor where he worked as a technician. From the

photographs, experts determined that Israel had the world's sixth largest

stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Vanunu's family and supporters are marking the 11th anniversary of his

imprisonment with a week of vigils and demonstrations demanding that he be

released from solitary confinement. They also want him to be examined by

an independent doctor.

"The issue here is one of human rights," Meir Vanunu said. "He has been

alone in a cell, without even a window. He is being treated worse than a

murderer or a rapist."

Meir Vanunu said his brother has stopped reading and listening to music

because he can no longer concentrate and finds the sound of music

unbearable. But he said his brother was still "very strong in spirit."

"Eleven years alone in prison, and only because he told the truth to the

outside world," Meir Vanunu said. "There is so much hate in this country

against my brother. Everyone in my family suffers, and they suffer until

the day this thing will be over."