Israel arrests reporter who interviewed Vanunu

10.00am

JERUSALEM - Israeli police arrested on Wednesday a visiting British journalist who in 1986 exposed the Jewish state's most sensitive military secrets in an interview with nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu.

Witnesses said plainclothes policemen met Peter Hounam at his Jerusalem hotel, bundled him off in a car and searched his room. A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister's Office, which oversees Israel's security services, confirmed the arrest.

A government gag order prevented release of further details in the case, the spokeswoman said. According to the website of the leading Yedioth Aharonoth newspaper, Hounam was being questioned on suspicion of committing "security offences".

In 1986, Hounam secured an exclusive interview with Vanunu, a former technician at the Israeli atomic reactor in Dimona. His story in Britain's Sunday Times led independent analysts to conclude Israel had stockpiled as many as 400 nuclear weapons.

Israel abducted Vanunu and jailed him for 18 years. Hounam came to Israel for Vanunu's release last month and has since spent time with him in a Jerusalem church despite government restrictions on Vanunu's contacts with the press.

A spokeswoman for Britain's Foreign Office said: "We have been informed that a Sunday Times journalist may have been arrested and our consular staff are looking into it."

Keen to ward off regional foes while avoiding arms races, Israel maintains a "strategic ambiguity" around its assumed nuclear arsenal. Some officials wanted Vanunu gagged after his release, saying he had more secrets to spill. He denied it.

- REUTERS