A British journalist released from Israeli custody on Thursday said that he had been held in a dungeon with excrement on the walls following his arrest on suspicion of espionage.
Peter Hounam was detained on Wednesday by the Israeli security agency on suspicion that he had obtained classified information from Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli technician who was jailed after revealing Israel’s nuclear capabilities to the world.
The journalist was released on condition that he leave Israel within 24 hours, and will not be allowed to return .
Speaking outside the Jerusalem jail where he had been held, Hounam said Israel should be ashamed of itself for arresting him. He complained of being kept overnight in solitary confinement in a ”dungeon with excrement on the walls” and limited to two hours’ sleep.
Hounam (60) said he was questioned for more than four hours by Israeli security. ”They accused me of spying on nuclear secrets and aggravated espionage. It is laughable,” he said.
Senior sources at the security agency Shin Bet said that Hounam had organised a covert operation to interview Vanunu in breach of his release regulations.
After 18 years in prison, Vanunu was released last month, but was forbidden from speaking about his work at Israel’s nuclear reactor and from contact with foreigners.
Hounam was the Sunday Times journalist who interviewed Vanunu in 1986 and then published his revelations of Israel’s nuclear programme.
According to Shin Bet, Hounam paid an Israeli woman, Yael Lotan, £1 000 to interview Vanunu on his behalf. Hounam, with the help of BBC employees, edited and duplicated the tapes.
Shin Bet said they had retrieved five copies of the interview but were not sure if other copies had been smuggled out of the country or distributed via the internet.
Shin Bet’s source said that the interview focused on Vanunu’s history, from his childhood to his work at Israel’s nuclear facility in the Negev desert.
The tapes were still to be analysed to see if Vanunu revealed any secrets or broke Israeli law, the source said. Vanunu could be made to return to prison if he is deemed to have broken any of the conditions for his release.
Hounam denied that Vanunu had passed on any secrets. ”All the information that Mordechai Vanunu knew about in 1986 was published at the time,” Hounam said. ”He has no more secrets, and it’s time the authorities here realised that.”
He added: ”The key fight is the fight to get Mordechai Vanunu the right to leave this country, start a new life in America, if that’s where he wants to go, and stop these ridiculous restrictions.”
Seeking to track to down all copies of the interview, Shin Bet also detained Chris Mitchell, a BBC journalist, as he tried to leave Israel with tapes of the interview.
Hiyari Sadi, a British free lance journalist, ”consented” to give Shin Bet his copies of the interview, the security sources said.
Hounam was arrested in Tel Aviv on Wednesday as he was on his way to meet a peace activist. He has been in Israel since Vanunu’s release, working with a television crew making a film for the BBC about the case.
Vanunu is barred from leaving Israel for at least a year and is staying in St George’s Anglican cathedral in Jerusalem. He has received death threats and is anxious to settle in the US with his adoptive parents.
On Thursda Hounam’s wife, Hilarie, said from the couple’s home in Aberfeldy, Perthshire, that he was ”overjoyed” to be released. She said she believed the arrest sprang from the Israeli authorities’ continuing campaign against Vanunu. ”They know he has no more secrets,” she said. ”It’s vengeance, isn’t it?”
Hounam angered the Israeli authorities by publishing the identity of the Mossad agent who lured Vanunu to Italy where he was kidnapped, drugged, bound and shipped back to Israel. In his book, The Woman from Mossad, Hounam identified the woman as Cheryl Bentov and tracked her down to Florida.
Donatella Rovera, an Amnesty International researcher, witnessed Hounam’s arrest in the garden of the Jerusalem Hotel.
”Peter Hounam was brought into the garden by five plain-clothes members of the security forces or police,” she said. ”He broke away from them and ran over to my table. He looked very concerned and just had the time to tell me: ‘I am being arrested, please tell the Sunday Times, please let people know’.”
The Foreign Press Association, which represents international news organisations in Israel, welcomed Hounam’s release but said the arrest of journalists was ”a most dangerous threat to any democracy”.
Hounam’s lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, called the detention a farce, and said he had not violated any of the restrictions on Vanunu. ”He was arrested as part of the security establishment’s never-ending obsession with Vanunu,” he said. – Guardian Unlimited Â