Israel expels BBC journalist over whistleblower interview

TEL AVIV -- Israel decided yesterday to expel a journalist working on a documentary for the British Broadcasting Corp. on Mordechai Vanunu, the former nuclear technician who spent 18 years in prison for revealing secrets about the Jewish state's atomic arsenal, a top security official said.

Authorities jailed the British journalist, Peter Hounam, for 24 hours and questioned him ''regarding espionage," after he apparently arranged a taped interview with Vanunu, who is barred from meeting foreigners or giving interviews to the international media.

Journalists and human rights groups condemned his arrest as a flagrant violation of press rights.

Hounam, who broke Vanunu's account of Israel's nuclear weapons in Britain's Sunday Times in 1986, said he was held ''in a dungeon with excrement on the walls."

His ordeal is the latest example of the distance Israel goes to stifle information about a decades-old nuclear program that authorities have never admitted exists.

''They accused me of spying on nuclear secrets and aggravated espionage. It is laughable," the 60-year-old Hounam said as he walked out of a Jerusalem detention center.

He was initially barred from meeting a lawyer. A Jerusalem court imposed a 24-hour gag order on the details of his arrest.

Hounam has been in Israel since Vanunu's release April 21. A senior official from one of Israel's security agencies said yesterday the British journalist had been trying for weeks to arrange an exclusive interview with Vanunu, despite being warned by authorities that even meeting him was forbidden.

''The restrictions were well-known to Peter Hounam," the official said on the condition he not be identified. ''He was questioned regarding espionage, because he was suspected of having classified material in his possession."

To avoid an outright breach of the restrictions, the official said, Hounam arranged for an Israeli antinuclear activist, Yael Lotan, to conduct the interview and hired an Israeli cameraman and sound technician to record it.

But he said Hounam was present during the interview and could be heard off-camera directing Lotan. The official said authorities seized tapes of the interview from another BBC journalist during an airport search as he was leaving Israel.

The security official said Vanunu spoke in the interview of Israel's Dimona nuclear facility, where he worked as a midlevel technician for eight years. He said investigators were still checking whether the remarks Vanunu made in the interview constituted a violation of his restrictions. If so, he said, authorities would weigh rearresting Vanunu.

Interviewed by phone late yesterday, Lotan said Vanunu revealed no new secrets.

''It's all been said; it's all been told," she said. ''He talked about working at Dimona, but I don't think there's anything he can say that would amount to revealing secrets anymore."

Agents of Israel's Shabak security service grabbed Hounam in Tel Aviv on Wednesday as he made his way to a dinner with Lotan. They took him to his Jerusalem hotel, searched his room, and placed him under arrest.

''The Shabak . . . have carried out a very shoddy investigation, and they should be ashamed of themselves," Hounam said of his detention.

Vanunu was laid off from Dimona in 1985. After traveling in Asia and Australia for several months, he approached the Sunday Times and offered information and photographs about the Israeli facility, arguing that the Jewish state should be disarmed and that Israelis have the right to know about their country's nuclear program.

The article Hounam ended up writing, based on weeks of interviews with Vanunu, led specialists to conclude Israel had built up to 200 nuclear bombs at Dimona since the late 1960s.

Days before it was published, Israeli Mossad agents abducted Vanunu from Rome and whisked him to Israel, where he was sentenced to 18 years in prison during a secret trial.

Hounam's arrest Wednesday set off a chorus of protests. The Foreign Press Association in Israel described it as ''an ominous precedent in a country which prides itself on its openness and its fairness."

After Vanunu's revelations, Israel has stuck to a policy of ''nuclear ambiguity," neither admitting nor denying it has the weapons.

Analysts say full disclosure would fuel the arms race in the region and force the United States to take a position on Israel's nuclear capability.