ISRAEL: Bursting with furious indignation, Sunday Times journalist Peter Hounam emerged from an Israeli lock-up after 24 hours last night.
He castigated the Israeli authorities for holding him "in a dungeon with excrement on the walls" on suspicion that he had been in illegal contact with freed Israeli nuclear spy Mordechai Vanunu.
Mr Hounam, the reporter to whom Mr Vanunu detailed the secrets of Israel's nuclear arsenal for a Sunday Times exposé in 1986, is making a documentary for the BBC following Mr Vanunu's recent release from jail after an 18-year term. The journalist is leaving Israel today, and may not be allowed into the country in the future.
Israeli security sources were quoted last night as saying that Mr Vanunu had broken restrictions imposed at the time of his release by giving an interview a few days ago detailing his work at the Dimona nuclear reactor, apparently for Mr Hounam's documentary. The Israeli authorities have confiscated some copies of the interview, reportedly carried out by a long-time pro-Vanunu activist, Ms Yael Lotan, at the weekend. Several cassettes are said to have been taken from a BBC reporter at Ben-Gurion Airport. But others are said to have evaded the Israeli authorities.
Some in the Israeli security establishment are now said to be pushing for Mr Vanunu's rearrest; other officials believe the detention of Mr Hounam, and the chorus of international condemnation it has provoked, constitute only the latest screw-up in Israel's continuing mishandling of the affair, and that the case of the former nuclear technician should now be allowed to recede from the headlines.
The Israeli justice ministry did not give advance approval for Mr Hounam's arrest, which drew angry protests from the Foreign Press Association in Israel.
The British journalist was arrested by four or five Shin Bet security agents on Wednesday as he headed to a meeting with Ms Lotan in Tel Aviv. He was taken to his Jerusalem hotel room, which was searched, and then to the police lock-up.
Talking emotionally to a crowd of journalists outside the jail after his release last night, Mr Hounam was adamant that "all the information that Mordechai Vanunu knew in 1986 was published at the time".
Mr Vanunu, he said, "has no more secrets and it's time the authorities realised that".
He said the Israeli security services had "made a terrible mistake" in arresting him. They accused him of "spying on Israel's nuclear secrets" and of "aggravated espionage", he said, but had now "come to their senses".
He had been kept in solitary confinement in a dungeon, interrogated for 4½ hours, and treated "with a degree of contempt", he said, and this in "a country that prides itself on being a western democracy".
Luckily, he added, he had good lawyers and help from diplomats, including intervention from the British ambassador here. Others, including Mr Vanunu, Mr Hounam observed, were not so fortunate.