Israel frees UK journalist in nuke case - reports

1.00pm

JERUSALEM - The British journalist who broke Mordechai Vanunu's account of Israel's nuclear secrets in 1986 was released from Israeli custody on Thursday, a day after his arrest, media reports said.

A Channel Two television correspondent at the detention facility in Jerusalem where Peter Hounam was being held and the website of the Haaretz newspaper reported the release and said the journalist planned to leave Israel at the weekend.

The media reports, quoting unnamed officials of Israel's Shin Bet security service, said Hounam was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of having arranged a television interview with Vanunu in violation of state gag orders.

Hounam's 1986 interview with Vanunu, a former technician at Israel's Dimona reactor, led independent analysts to conclude the Jewish state had stockpiled hundreds of nuclear weapons, making it one of the world's top atomic powers.

Hounam greeted Vanunu, a Jewish convert to Christianity, when the Israeli was freed on April 21 after completing an 18-year prison term for treason and has since spent time with him in a Jerusalem church where he now resides.

Simon McDonald, the British ambassador to Israel, had met Justice Minister Yosef Lapid earlier in the day to press for the release of the reporter, who interviewed Vanunu on behalf of Britain's Sunday Times in 1986, sources close to the talks said.

After the meeting, Israeli officials agreed to allow Hounam's lawyers to meet him for the first time since his arrest.

Since Vanunu was freed, he has been subject to a series of government-imposed restrictions, including a ban on travelling abroad, associating with foreigners without authorisation and speaking to the media.

Israel maintains a "strategic ambiguity" around its assumed nuclear arsenal.

- REUTERS